Details:
① Artwork:
Heavy Duty
This brooding and banal self-portrait is a continuation of the artist's carefully crafted mundane scenes that feature everyday objects from life. Each composition evokes the fleeting moments that contextualize the routine of our days—forgotten in-between moments that reveal both ourselves and the dignity of life. The foreshortened perspective of the supine body in this work is a familiar posture that results from using a phone in bed. This universal activity has achieved particular prominence during quarantine. The bottom-heavy composition inspired the title, suggesting the burden, anxiety or worry in achieving one’s potential. As this work was being finished, the California painter Wayne Thiebaud passed away. There are small nods to Thiebaud in this work, such as the bright hues of color that pop on the outline of shaded areas.
As in all of Tharp's figurative work, the primary aim of this composition is to explore various traditions of painting and sculpture by combing them with the artist's own style—emerging with something altogether new. Tharp's process is both instinctual and strategic; however, there is never one, singular organizing principle at work in his compositions. Each painting involves fumbling around in the dark while simultaneously maintaining the projection of the artist's ultimate intentions.
Specs:
③ Artist:
In Storm Tharp’s work, characters and expressive moments emerge through washes of color and intricate linework. Each of his paintings works as an apparatus by which a character gets read as a performance, fantasy, or manifestation of what we want to become. Emphasizing the subtle space between shape and abstraction, Tharp questions the nature of selfhood: What is our inner identity versus what gets projected to the outer world? And how do the two combine or coalesce?
Storm Tharp was born in 1970 in Salem, OR. He earned his BFA from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY (1992).
Tharp has mounted solo exhibitions at PDX CONTEMPORARY ART in Portland, OR; Galerie Bertrand in Geneva, Switzerland; Feldbuschweisner in Berlin, Germany; Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York, NY; and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.
His work has been included in group exhibitions such as American Genre: Contemporary Painting, curated by Michelle Grabner, at the ICA at MECA in Portland, ME; PAPER at The Saatchi Gallery in London, England; Whitney Biennial 2010, curated by Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari at Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY; Human Being, curated by Kristan Kennedy, at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, OR; and others.
Tharp’s art resides in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY; Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY; Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, OH; Portland Art Museum in Portland, OR; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY; and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in San Diego, CA.
Tharp’s work has been featured in publications such as Art in America, Artforum, ART PAPERS, New American Paintings, Interview Magazine, Modern Painters, The Daily Beast, BOMB Magazine, Daily Kos,, and elsewhere.
This painting evokes the fleeting moments that contextualize the routine of our days—forgotten in-between moments that reveal both ourselves and the dignity of life. The foreshortened perspective of the supine body in this work is a familiar posture that results from using a phone in bed.More
- Unframed
- Signed
