ART CITIES:N.York-Austin Thomas
Austin Thomas is an artist, curator and community builder. She creates works that explore, alternatively, personal narratives and public. In her daily journals, which she creates during conversations with friends, Thomas crafts detailed representations of energy and sound that later become the basis for her larger works on paper, including collages and abstract assemblages.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Morgan Lehman Gallery
Austin Thomas in her solo exhibition at Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York, presents drawings and print work created while the artist was in residence at Guttenberg Arts, these new prints employ a unique collagraphic process whereby collaged forms are loaded with ink, which is then transferred in discreet layers onto found paper. The resulting images fluently marry spontaneity and precision, making reference to a range of Modernist styles including Constructivism, Minimalism, and Color Field painting. Thomas, ever interested in the independent life of paper, complicates and adds richness to the reading of her prints by insisting on the tactility, imperfection, and historicity of the surfaces she starts with. As community builder, Austin Thomas founded Pocket Utopia, that began as an alternative artists’ space in an old storefront on Flushing Avenue in Brooklyn. After hosting exhibitions, salon discussions and other events for two years, Pocket Utopia reopened on Henry Street in Manhattan. According to art critic Roberta Smith, Pocket Utopia became “one of the more singular bright spots in the Lower East Side firmament.” In 2014, Pocket Utopia spent a year in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. As the artist says “Being an artist is about creating a community and contributing to that community. It is also about making good work and doing-it-yourself. Artists have to be in charge of their own artistic development and they have to chart their own path. These are the words I work by, whether building social sculptures or making works on paper”. Although paper is a unifying material, many of her collages include a variety of media: Thomas’ own drawings, some found objects and figurative collages, old books, graph paper. Thomas finds materials, such as sketches or photos, and makes art, including drawings and geometric designs. Many of these also come from her own “travel diaries,” little notebooks that she carries around. These works might be made on a trip or in a café, on the fly as “anywhere, anytime art” that can be cut or ripped up and repurposed. Then she meticulously incorporates those pieces of art into collages, essentially incorporating the ‘great wide world’ into each object. In doing that, she embraces the studio as a place for assembly while the actual creation takes place in myriad locations.
Info: Morgan Lehman Gallery, 534 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 16/2-25/3/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.morganlehmangallery.com
