Wow, I am impressed by Austin Thomas’s show. It is badass.
I’ve always liked her Lower Eastside gallery Pocket Utopia, and I have seen her
work here and there, but this is the first time I’ve seen a bunch of it
together. Unsurprisingly, it’s not unlike what she curates, as if Pocket Utopia
is an extended artist talk about her process. I guess what hit me is that I
like her work better than anything that she has shown. If you’re unfamiliar
with the work, it all seems to be tied into physical books in a very loose way.
She seems to work exclusively on faded paper in a style that makes you suspect
her studio smells like mildewing library books or the old basement at the
Strand. I guess, I suspect her work to be sculptures / collages made from torn
books, or small work that felt like it was culled from a box of childhood
belongings, that might lead one to believe they were a hell of a progeny. But
what I found most surprising was the diversity, from a nice still life of a
three-dimensional triangle that I think is the slip case from a hardcover book
or the flower photogram that I am just assuming came from being pressed under a
Thomas Pynchon novel to the large black and white cube sculpture in the center
of the room, which is surprisingly blunt and assertive compared to the rest of
the more humbly scaled pieces. So what I am saying is Austin Thomas is damn
good and should certainly be having work out in the world more.
Through Mar. 15th
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