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Mickalene Thomas | Interiors

viewing_room
2016
  •  

    MICKALENE THOMAS | INTERIORS

     

    Mickalene Thomas has completed two new prints with Durham Press, titled Interior: Blue Couch and Green Owl and Interior: Fireplace with Blackbird, which are published as editions of twenty-six and measure 42 3/8 x 34 1/4 inches. These mixed media collage prints are based on collaged paintings the artists created in 2012 and 2015. This series depicts midcentury living rooms which Thomas encountered in The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement, an eighteen-volume book set from the early 1970s that instructs readers how to design and care for domestic spaces. The artist used these found photographs as the basis for each composition, adding her own imagery and textures. Thomas has linked her interest in these images of interiors to both the landscape and portraiture traditions. Her collage technique emphasizes the dynamic angular lines of each image and layers together different perspectives to create complex spatial relationships. The Interiors are intimate and familiar with the incorporation of personal spaces and natural elements, while also abstracted in a way that appears almost synthetic with their geometric patterned planes.

    • Mickalene Thomas, Interior: Blue Couch and Green Owl, 2016
      Artworks

      Mickalene Thomas

      Interior: Blue Couch and Green Owl, 2016
      Mixed Media Collage: Screenprint, Woodblock, Digital Print, and Flocking
      Saunders Waterford 425gsm HP
      42 3/8 x 34 1/4 inches
      (107.6 x 87 cm)
      Edition of 26
    • Mickalene Thomas, Interior: Fireplace with Blackbird, 2016
      Artworks

      Mickalene Thomas

      Interior: Fireplace with Blackbird, 2016
      Mixed Media Collage: Screenprint, Woodblock, Digital Print, Etching, Gold Leaf, Wood Veneer, and Flocking
      Saunders Waterford 425gsm HP
      42 3/8 x 34 1/4 inches
      (107.6 x 87 cm)
      Edition of 26
  • Though neither Blue Couch and Green Owl nor Fireplace with Blackbird feature any people, the prints closely relate to Thomas’s...

    Michael Kondel | Applying wood veneer

     

    Though neither Blue Couch and Green Owl nor Fireplace with Blackbird feature any people, the prints closely relate to Thomas’s portraiture practice. In her Interiors, a series Thomas explores in both painting and print, the architecture, furniture, and decorations of everyday spaces are entry points from which to explore questions of personal perception, self representation, and the gaze; a couch becomes the stand in for a figure, a bowl of fruit implies that this figure will return home. “Oftentimes the interior landscape is created as a sort of mask,” she said of Blue Couch, “A way of not only hiding what is beneath the surface, but also of projecting an image of beauty, power, or elegance.” These particular interiors, however, are not rooms inhabited by specific people or families, but idealized – or once-idealized – rooms that serve as exemplars of “good housekeeping.” As such, these fractured, amalgamated interiors also examine the collective facades that inform our individual notions of home.  

     

    The Interiors are constructed from a multitude of mediums. Collage elements of silkscreen, woodblock, etching, and digital printing are meticulously cut out and adhered to a screenprinted base. Thomas also employs highly textural mediums – wood veneer, flocking, and gold leaf – to further the sense of dimensionality in the print. The resulting prints are complex and physical, existing in the same world has her highly tactile collaged paintings.

     

    Interior: Blue Couch and Green Owl and Interior: Fireplace with Blackbird, as well as other editions with Mickalene Thomas, are available directly through Durham Press. For more information, please contact us at sales@durhampress.com.

  • Interiors (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Michael Kondel | Applying collage elements (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Applying gold leaf (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Various collage materials (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Applying flocking (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Cutting rubylith (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Kees Holterman and Michael Kondel | Assessing prints (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Etching for collage material (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

    Interiors

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