5/4/2008
Tom Gallant
Museum 52, London
The Collector V. And It Came to Pass...
“There are more enigmas in the shadow of a man who walks in the sun than in all the
religions of the past, present and future”
Giorgio de Chirico, 1917
Museum 52 is delighted to present its third solo exhibition with artist Tom Gallant. In this
new collection of meticulously crafted works Gallant explores the full scope of his practice.
Navigating the formalism inherent in the process of ‘the cut’, he moves beyond the
exactitudes of his craft, allowing his work to become a study of the form itself. He opens up
the language of collage and uses it as a formal device to explore the strength of the
negative spaces created in his cuts and layered silhouettes.
The Collector V: And It Came to Pass… will feature a series of new large-scale works which
demonstrate his continued preoccupation with the traditions of collaged paper constructs.
Using extracts of pornographic magazines to depict flesh and the abstracted body he subtly
layers these fragments beneath carefully cut replications of cloth and cloaked forms.
These figurations, sourced from Gustav Dore’s illustrations from The Bible, envelop the flesh
tones in a series of caged contours, lingering as cadaverous entities within the frames. The
simple folds of cloth, magnified and isolated, are seen grappling with the forms beneath
them. Occasional hints towards the outline of a thigh, a shoulder, or even an architectural
intrusion, offer a gentle indication of the forms’ origin. One’s eye is drawn into the dark
aperture of the work; where Gallant plays in shadow and light with a painterly sensibility,
breathing life into these hollow vessels. The works, whilst they resist anatomical labeling,
have an abstract sexual charge, less clearly referential than previous works, they instead
emphasise that which is simultaneously hidden and revealed.
Gallant’s works are immersed in the paradoxes of this absent presence; heavily subsumed
by the process of removal, subtraction and fragmentation. Steeped in iconographic
references, the cloaked forms rest in a state of suspended animation. They hint at that
which they might conceal. Never overt, they cloak the surface in a tensile space of
interpretation, weaving illuminated form out of inchoate darkness.
From the outset, through the act of subtraction and in his precise cuts, Gallant’s work enters
a dialogue of spatial distancing. Each fragmentation and layer conflating the fore, middle
and backgrounds further. Shadows, or vessels, to the forms they depict, these works place
their emphasis on the power of negative space. In the still isolation of the concealed form,
Gallant explores the combination of abstracted figures, powerful iconography and,
moreover, the collective impact of these phenomena.
Tom Gallant held a fellowship at the Royal Academy Schools in 2001 followed by a
residency at Stichting B.a.d, Rotterdam in 2003 and his first solo show at Museum 52 in
2004, Collector I. Gallant’s work is included in many major international collections and his
recent exhibitions include; Changing Role Move Over Gallery, Naples, BOYSCraft,
Haifa Museum, Tel Aviv, Excess at the Angel Row Museum, Nottingham.
Private View 16 April 2008
Museum 52
52 Redchurch Street - London
Wednesday-Saturday 11am - 6pm.