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Will Thomson


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Will Thomson (b. 1992; London, UK) is a self-taught artist whose work explores the physical and metaphorical barriers that shape our relationship to the world. His multi-layered paintings reside in their own processes: they are a series of corrections and alterations, an attempt to make sense of what came before and to recognize how history and experience inform understanding of our environment.

“Some barriers are intended to keep us out. Hedges, gates, barbed wire prevent us from accessing the landscape, because our curiosity might harm it or the interests of those who inhabit it. This distance from the landscape changes our vision of it too. It remains unknowable and becomes visually abstract. In real life as in paintings, hills, from far away, appear blue. The other kind of barrier - windows, screens, canvases - allow us to experience the landscape but keep us detached from its physical effect. However, though the environment is not able to affect us, it does affect the barrier. When water streaks on a window, it distorts the view; when direct light hits a painting, it blocks our view. Atmospheric effects, by reminding us of the presence of the barrier, remind us that reality is both figurative and abstract at the same time. A snowdrift is on some level just a pile of hexagons. Barriers exist in the city too, but we as city dwellers tend to notice them more in the countryside. Away from street signs and traffic lights and language, we don’t know what we’re looking at. There, reality is made of different things. Like the other barriers, this allows us to see the landscape both clearly and obscurely. Not knowing the name of a type of tree stops us from seeing the tree; knowing the name of the type of tree stops us from seeing that specific tree. We distrust it.“ - Jack Dunleavy for Thomson’s solo show Two Hundred Pounds of Cement at The Problem Library in San Francisco, CA.

Recent exhibitions include Two Hundred Pounds Of Cement at Problem Library, San Francisco, CA; Noontime Ghosts at Eve Leibe Gallery, London, UK; Pathways On Paper at South Parade, London, UK; and, Future Fossils with Alice Black Gallery, London, UK. The artist is based in London.

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