Thomas Glassford | Stripes and Solids
Thomas Glassford is perhaps most well known for his sculptures using dried gourds. Exploring the sexual undertones of these objects, the artist created wild assemblages and even juxtaposed the gourds with everyday functional objects, from furniture to lighting. The current exhibition will feature a new body of work, the Partituras (Musical Scores). Departing from the functional premise of his earlier work, Glassford has focused on a new material, commercial anodized aluminum molding, to create wall sculptures that are unabashedly decorative and optically engaging. These Partituras are formed by joining row after row of different molding strips to create a surface of varying depth. Some of these sculptures are monochrome, while others are coated with colorful vertical stripes that enhance the innate rhythm of the peaks and valleys of rippled metal. Overall, these low-relief constructions flirt with the divide between painting and sculpture, simultaneously recalling minimalist sculpture and Op-Art painting of the 60s and 70s.
Born in Laredo, Texas, Thomas Glassford completed his BFA at the University of Texas, Austin in 1987. He then relocated to Mexico City in the early 1990s and has continued to live and work there. Glassford has exhibited widely in Mexico, including a solo exhibition at the Galería de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City and most recently at Galería OMR, Mexico City. The artist has shown in the United States in exhibitions such as Road to Aztlan: Art From a Mythical Land, a survey held in at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2001. Glassford also participated in InSITE 1997, San Diego-Tijuana and the 5th and 6th Bienals de Havana in Havana, Cuba. Stripes and Solids is the artist’s first solo exhibition in California.
