Forbes, The Concept Of Sculpture: Thomas J Price “Beyond Measure” At Hauser & Wirth DTLA
By Tom Teicholz
Thomas J Price's "Beyond Measure," is the first comprehensive solo exhibition in the United States of the British-born London-based sculptor, exhibiting his large-scale bronze figures made for the LA exhibition, as well as a series of marble heads, a shelf of smaller heads, a more abstract golden sculpture, a painting, and an artwork composed of a series of photographic prints.
As you enter the South Gallery at Hauser & Wirth in Downtown Los Angeles you are confronted with an array of larger-than-life- figures, 9 to 12 feet tall, displayed in the gallery's columned rectangular space at angles to each other so that you need to navigate between and around them. Four of the sculptures are of Black women, dressed casually; a fifth is of a young Black man, in a double-breasted suit and dress shoes.
‘It's about what you take out, or what do I add in that creates [a] surface rhythm that builds….’ Price added that, ‘I love playing with the levels of detail — where it happens and where it doesn't happen.’ Negative space, he said, is ‘ so charged for me. There's something so powerful, dramatic, in that potential, in that space.’
Although Price's sculptures look like real people, they are not literal portraits. Price held casting sessions in LA where individuals were interviewed, photographed and in some cases 3D-scanned. Using a combination of modern technology that allows for precision carving and rapid manufacture, and traditional techniques to work the surface details, Price then created amalgams – "Fictional people depicting real moments," as he calls it.
Although the standing figures are made of bronze, Price has covered them in a chemical black patina he formulated that looks almost like a plastic or rubber resin coating, adding to the feeling that we are looking at a captured moment, frozen in time and place. In creating the sculptures, Price is challenging himself, asking: How can we use technology to see more? To create a psychological moment? In a sense, these five figures are our guides, our Virgils if you will, leading us in Price's artistic inquiry.
‘It's all about his shoes basically,’ Price said, laughing. ‘The suit fits. But he's not so sure. And that's [the] flex in the title. I think that's also because I worked for a long time with the idea of vulnerability being actually a strength.’ The question is: How is he inhabiting the space he is in? Does he feel lesser than others? Does he feel he is being judged?’
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