Chris Thorson | Tabula Rasa
Quint Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition with Chris Thorson, sculpture by Roman De Salvo and a live performance by San Diego-based band Floodflower.
Tabula Rasa is the first solo exhibition at the gallery for San Francisco Bay Area artist Chris Thorson, and will feature sculpture and an installation. The opening reception will take place on Saturday, April 1st from 6-8pm and is open to the public.
Sculptor Chris Thorson casts everyday objects, sometimes destroying the original, recasts them and then paints them realistically. The utility of the object is removed and replaced with the reverence of an artwork. Cigarette butts are reformatted as art objects. A dirty sock is cast in plaster – taking away its utilitarianism as well as its soft and fluffy comfort.
“Under a critical gaze, the cartoon characters and pop icons shed their innocence, revealing allegiance with consumerism, narcissism and patriarchy. Through the guise of children’s entertainment, toxic ideologies were sugarcoated, packaged and sent out to play.” – Chris Thorson
The majority of objects represented in this installation will be from the artist’s series Sticker Books (Tabula Rasa). Sticker books from the 1980’s are simultaneously nostalgic and reference popular culture. “Tabula rasa” means blank slate in Latin - these bound books of stickers begin as a blank slate and are filled with child-like abandon, and stickers that represent one’s own interests and personality. The process by which the artworks are cast in urethane add to the blankness, as the artist has to fill in the puff stickers with paint to recapture the pop culture icons and weather them to recreate the look of the original. The installation will also include work from her other series Mirrors (Inner Monologue), Keys (The Stranger) and Socks (Bro Palace).
Thorson has been shown in gallery and museum exhibitions in San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles, CA; St. Louis, MO; and New York, NY. Thorson lives and works in Vallejo, CA.
Also on view in our sculpture gallery will be a special installation of Roman de Salvo’s Hummer from 2004-2008. Made of electrical conduit, a hair clipper and lights; the sculpture will be shown in our gallery for the first time in ten years.
Floodflower, a local band including visual artist Peter Halasz on Guitar & Vocals, Ross Hendler on Bass, and Matt Lynott on Drums, with Backup Vocals by Nova Williams. They are a group of 90's castaways channeling Gorecki, Bauhaus and Floyd. They will be releasing their first album: El Greco Skies. The live performance will start at 8pm.
