Bell's balancing of the terms «abstraction» and «materials» is significant — especially with regard to the works from 1978 on display here — by differentiating the absolute thingness of these paintings from the allusions to the observational world that you find even in something as densely materialist as Richard Serra's black oil - stick drawings. (hyperallergic.com)
And this soul was, in a sense, the end or the purpose for the thing being alive in the first place, and is the essence in a, sort of, the complete thingness as it were of something that's alive and it's the source or the origin of its movement. (scientificamerican.com)
Clearly he values each bug as much as any other, and wants to preserve it in its essential thingness rather than create the hierarchies that result from organization in depth. (chicagoreader.com)