ART CITIES:London – Blair Thurman
As a boy in the ‘60s, Blair Thurman spent a lot of time at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, where his mother was director. As an art student in the ‘80s, he sought to escape prevailing theoretical concerns. Thurman’s work owes as much to his command of a broad range of media as to subconscious influences. Parallel to, and sometimes in combination with his paintings, he has transposed his signature imagery into neon.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Almine Rech Gallery
In his new solo exhibition entitled “Mature Blonde” at Almine Rech Gallery in London, Blair Thurman presents entirely new paintings. Blair Thurman combines his personal iconography and his passionate collecting of model cars with an acute awareness of the inherent challenges of painting, resulting in a Pop-Minimalist sensibility infused with tribal patterns and American car culture. His shaped canvases exist on the periphery of both painting and sculpture simultaneously. As the artist says about his work “One thing about my work is that I always try to make it about me. I try to make it personal, make it my own and connect it to my past”. The neon works pose as inverted reliefs of the paintings as they cut similar edges and familiar tracks. Recalling historic associations of neon, from bar signs to Minimalist and Conceptual art, these glowing reliefs create new outlines, altering the dimensionality of painting itself through the electrical circuit. He is using the neon lights to intensify or camouflage the colors of the painted surfaces, the paintings absorb or reflect the light, the space becomes saturated, and the perception of each part is indiscriminately altered by our perception of the whole. Also the title of the artwork is very important to him, because: “The title is an opportunity for the artist to identify their position in relation to the viewer. Am I giving you the finger? Are we sharing a joke? Sharing a secret? Am I patting you on the head? Am I happy? Am I sad?”.
Info: Almine Rech Gallery, 11 Savile Row, Mayfair, London, Duration: 31/3-14/5/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.alminerech.com
