Up From The Ground
November 15, 2019October 4th - October 19th, 2019
works by Lucas Thomas
We inhabit space not only physically, but also emotionally and spiritually, and thus it is worth exploring the poetry of form from a place that is neither and both architecture and art.
Lucas Thomas’s practice benefits from the freedom to experiment that is inherent to the discipline of art while being informed by his interests in architecture. Form is a language of abstraction inherent in both the disciplines of architecture and sculpture. As such, it is not apparent why these disciplines should be regarded as so distinct. Thomas’s sculptures can be regarded as separate art objects, but in their relationship to architecture they might also be seen as operating in relation to one another, transforming the gallery into a scaled down city. His freedom to control the context of the gallery to play with concepts of scale and Urbanism.
Simultaneously, painting is here placed in dialogue with sculpture, as Thomas’s paintings are used to ideate in a way specific to a medium that is not bound by the necessity to respond to gravity. Without the need to build self-supporting structures, Thomas’s paintings can more intuitively chronicle the thoughts of the artist.
Thomas also employs strategies to incorporate found objects, allowing their forms to serve as a call to which his structures respond. In this way, he frames them so that their previous implications are shed and their formal potential is revealed. Working with found objects also helps Thomas relinquish the absolute control of the individual artist, making him receptive to the suggestiveness of the given. Though his architectural approach implies the control implicated in careful design, this receptivity is an openness to allowing the spiritual to influence Thomas’s practice. Like composer John Cage, design and randomness are not treated as opposites, but work together to produce results unforeseen by the artist. And like artist Robert Irwin, something that at first registers as controlled is actually working to evoke a spiritual experience.
These opposites of the designer’s impulse and the natural impulse can be balanced. The elements at play are these: awareness, openness, and response. It is our hope that these objects will present themselves to you, in their mute presence, so that you too might be engaged in Thomas’s experiments.
