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Gwenn Thomas: Awnings, Windows, Rooms
10/23/2016- 12/4/2016


Opening reception: Sunday, October 23rd, 6-8pm

Gwenn Thomas's exhibition comprises a selection of works that are conceptually interrelated by her ongoing study of the relationship between photography and painting. Between her photo emulsion on linen works and her series of sculptural window pieces, her work examines how photography shapes our contemporary perception of painting. The earliest work in this show is a hybrid, using a painted frame to blur the lines between our conception of painting and photography as distinctly separate.

Continuing into the present, Thomas's most recent works are framed laminated photographs of the same window taken at various times of day: morning, late afternoon and dusk. Each of these windows represent different moments of space and time, contemplating our experience of lived space. Her earlier works from this series began with an exploration into the play between the two-dimensional image and the three-dimensional object frame. Starting with the architectural subject matter of the photograph itself, Thomas interlinks the image with the structure of its presentational frame, which is initiated by the image itself. These irregularly shaped photographic objects construct the illusion of actual windows, recalling Marcel Duchamp's window of 1920. Through this series, she returns conceptually to her early photographic studies of architecture and windows, which were presented within painted frames.

Gwenn Thomas's photo emulsion on linen works began with construction/collages of paper strips, corrugated plastic board, and packing tape, which were then photographed and printed on photo-sensitive linen and stretched as "canvases." Going back to very simple means -- isolating grays and blacks, shadows and lights, textures and tones -- and to the very beginnings of photography, the results are a play of pattern and space with a depth of field that is precisely described and denied. These ambiguities make possible extended ways of looking at photography. Like Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy, her work is also an homage to abstract painters, including Mondrian and Sonia Delaunay. These works exist pictorially between the worlds of abstraction and realism, producing paintings through a mediated form of photography.

Gwenn Thomas is an artist who lives and works in New York. Thomas studied at the Sorbonne, Paris, and is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art, NY. Recently, she has had solo shows at Point of Contact Gallery, Syracuse University, New York, Exile Gallery, Berlin, Art Projects International, NY, and Yvon Lambert, NY. Her work is included in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA, Sao Schlumberger, Paris, France, C.A.M. Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal and Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf, Germany. A survey of Thomas's work was published by Charta (Milan, Italy) 2013.


Press:

A Breach in the Membrane: Gwenn Thomas
Hyperallergic: Stephen Maine































Gwenn Thomas, Window House (Reflections), 1991, toned silver prints with sand, wood, and oil pigment, 22.75 x 22.5 x 6.25 inches