Gwenn Thomas at Art Projects International

Not quite prose, not quite poetry, the pigment and Iris prints of Gwenn Thomas fall between categories. Ten years ago she made black-and-white photos of collages, enlarged and printed on linen that had been coated with photo emulsion. But she missed color's vibrant expressiveness, and in 1996 she started using color again. For her current work, she creates collages, often of fabric swatches, which she digitally scans. She makes Iris prints (which use a vegetable dye) or pigment prints that bring the work closer to painting. In these works, details have a nearly hallucinogenic clarity and acuteness. Thomas says that she is coming from a photographic perspective--she likens her work to that of James Casebere and other artists who photograph assemblages and constructions--but she is at pains to explain that her imagery, in her early work especially, references modernist painting.

By photographing her collages, Thomas adds distance to the viewing process. The image is so sharply drawn and the detail so exquisite that it is often hard to believe, from a few feet away, that we are not seeing the collage itself. Due to the secondary role of the camera, the experience of Thomas's art tends toward the exploration of looking, a consideration of the way an image is processed by our gaze and our intelligence. The swaths of cloth that make up the collages involve an abstract narrative of signs, like early forms of writing. AB: 50/A Story of a Shadow (2002) is a two-panel pigment print on canvas; each panel depicts multiple rows of small cloth rectangles that look much like a sequence of books; of particular interest are the edges, which seem to rise up, detached from the ground.

For the 18 pieces in the show, including three C-prints of drawings, Thomas uses photography to highlight detail and tonal quality. Five panels from the series "Abstract 23-27" (1998-99) were placed next to each other for a virtuoso display of illusionistic texture. The differently colored elements of each panel look like torn paper; in repetition, they suggest that Thomas is telling a story through forms. Two drawings were also on view. In a small, untitled 2001 piece in india ink and marker, Thomas again arrays rows of rectangles, sometimes filled with squiggly lines, sometimes filled with color. The piece is alive with precise marks.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group