Angel Venus 4

Comment

Comment by Kim Thoman on September 4, 2015 at 11:17am

Dear Kristen,

Thank you very much for your comment and serious looking. I very much appreciate both! The middle panel of this piece was printed - not on a 3D printer but flat. And, not relief. I create the shape on Cinema 4D and then use my own scanned in paintings to give it skin. Sometimes, I can make it work by wrapping "her" with the oil painted panels next to her and sometimes I have to use a different painting to wrap her with. In this case, it was a different painting. You can see in "Venus of Taos 1", for example, I was able to wrap "her" with the same oil painted side - find the leaf on both sides. I am moving forward quickly to consider printing on metal or other structures for my middle panel. I have a new series titled: "Gray Matters: Crucifixion" where the center is a recessed wood panel. Hope this helps explain. Again, thanks so much for your interest. I'd like to put you on my mailing list, if you would please drop an email to: kim@kimthoman.com.

Kind Regards,

Kim Thoman

Comment by Resident Curator on September 4, 2015 at 9:42am

Curator’s Comments:   

 

All of the mixed media work you’ve posted has an interesting tension between emotional mark making/gesture and more cerebral meditation.  I particularly enjoy the symmetry of Angel Venus 4 which appears to distill those opposing visual tensions to arrive as a cohesive gestalt.  The stability of the central Venus form is a pleasing counterpoint to the side panels.  I searched for clues to the nature of its media in other pieces, and am wondering if it does in fact contain a 3-d printed object, as per Emerging Venus of 3d printing and welded steel.  Alternately, if painted in oil on canvas, it exhibits a wonderful trompe l’oeil illusion of form.  The large scale of the canvas is likely to imbue the subjects, while abstracted, with a figurative presence.  The visual push and pull between flatter negative black space and organic modulated passages offers a dynamic interplay of space and ideas.  I do read the side imagery as wings of the central body. While the Venus could be more in reference to female fetish figures, the piece as a whole is transformative and for me moves beyond a singular reading.