interview with PETER SCHUYFF by BILL POWERS since the late ’80s, the abstract artist has made waves with his mind-bending visuality and his graphic, ironic twists on avant-garde painting BILL POWERS — When I interviewed Mark Grotjahn, he made a distinction between abstract painting and nonobjective art. Nonobjective art has no direct correlation to the real world — like a Mondrian, for example. PETER SCHUYFF — Maybe he was talking about the difference between a painting and a picture? My friend and favorite artist Neil Campbell refers to his work as “pictures,” and he makes minimal, formal abstraction much in the spirit of a John McLaughlin. BILL POWERS — Why does he call them pictures? PETER SCHUYFF — Because they’re purely visual. In my case, I have a relationship with the back of my paintings. I’m very fussy about them as objects. But I do use light and shadow, so in that sense, yes, they…