LOS ANGELES SUNSETS AND QUIET LANDSCAPES
Thomas Linder, 2019
Resin, fiberglass, pigment
Two 55-gallon drums of resin along with columns, windows, ceilings, floors, and corners rest anxiously for Los Angeles-based artist, Thomas Linder’s arrival mid-April. Linder, originally from Minnesota, will be occupying the Standard Oil Building in downtown Omaha, where he will take on his most ambitious sculptural work to date. Known for representation that might suggest the landscape of a Los Angeles sunset through his technical mastery of casting resin often infused with reds, yellows, blues, and the in-between. Linder will bring his sensibility of transparency and color to a building that is quite gray and disconnected to the exterior landscape. Through the process of casting, Linder will use the existing architecture as a contextual starting point for creating a series of work that connects the monumental with the ephemeral, the opaque with the transparent. With two floors indefinitely occupied by fellow Los Angeles artist, Mike Nesbit’s FLOOD work, the Standard Oil Building – as part of Maple St. Construct’s programming – will continue to question the contemporary role of the gallery and museum.
Show Sponsor:
Lucky Bucket Brewing Co.
Thomas Linder, 2019
Resin, fiberglass, pigment
Two 55-gallon drums of resin along with columns, windows, ceilings, floors, and corners rest anxiously for Los Angeles-based artist, Thomas Linder’s arrival mid-April. Linder, originally from Minnesota, will be occupying the Standard Oil Building in downtown Omaha, where he will take on his most ambitious sculptural work to date. Known for representation that might suggest the landscape of a Los Angeles sunset through his technical mastery of casting resin often infused with reds, yellows, blues, and the in-between. Linder will bring his sensibility of transparency and color to a building that is quite gray and disconnected to the exterior landscape. Through the process of casting, Linder will use the existing architecture as a contextual starting point for creating a series of work that connects the monumental with the ephemeral, the opaque with the transparent. With two floors indefinitely occupied by fellow Los Angeles artist, Mike Nesbit’s FLOOD work, the Standard Oil Building – as part of Maple St. Construct’s programming – will continue to question the contemporary role of the gallery and museum.
Show Sponsor:
Lucky Bucket Brewing Co.
Photos Courtesy of Dan Schwalm
About the Artist:
Thomas Linder’s artistic process as a sculptor utilizes wood and fiberglass to create paintings and modular sculptures that interact with their setting’s light sources to activate, reflect, and project translucent planes of color. For Linder, this approach is parallel to painting in the construction and application of medium and pigment. Wood frames are built, fabric is stretched, and pigmented resin is painted, sprayed, or dropped. The sculptural dimensionality of the frames provides space behind and between the translucent planes of color to allow light to pass through, projecting and mixing new colors within and surrounding the work. There is a strong sense of experimentation that flows through the practice, producing many formats, textures, and applications through the interaction of these two materials.
Linder’s recent body of work explores the imagery of his past in the Midwest with materials and colors of Southern California. While Linder was heavily influenced by the light-based and finish fetish movement which blossomed in Los Angeles, there is also a strong relationship to his personal history. Growing up actively involved in the family’s greenhouse business, there is a strong correlation to the DIY mentality and architecture of Midwestern farming operations. For Linder, this brings a level of practicality and ease of construction indicative of functionality. Crops of bright flowers inspire color within variations of a grid composition. Treatment of surface is unfinished, rough and textured, providing a loose painterly feel to an otherwise minimal format, and inviting the viewer in for closer inspection.
Thomas Linder was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1986. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California and is the co-founder of BBQLA.
www.thomaslinder.com
Thomas Linder’s artistic process as a sculptor utilizes wood and fiberglass to create paintings and modular sculptures that interact with their setting’s light sources to activate, reflect, and project translucent planes of color. For Linder, this approach is parallel to painting in the construction and application of medium and pigment. Wood frames are built, fabric is stretched, and pigmented resin is painted, sprayed, or dropped. The sculptural dimensionality of the frames provides space behind and between the translucent planes of color to allow light to pass through, projecting and mixing new colors within and surrounding the work. There is a strong sense of experimentation that flows through the practice, producing many formats, textures, and applications through the interaction of these two materials.
Linder’s recent body of work explores the imagery of his past in the Midwest with materials and colors of Southern California. While Linder was heavily influenced by the light-based and finish fetish movement which blossomed in Los Angeles, there is also a strong relationship to his personal history. Growing up actively involved in the family’s greenhouse business, there is a strong correlation to the DIY mentality and architecture of Midwestern farming operations. For Linder, this brings a level of practicality and ease of construction indicative of functionality. Crops of bright flowers inspire color within variations of a grid composition. Treatment of surface is unfinished, rough and textured, providing a loose painterly feel to an otherwise minimal format, and inviting the viewer in for closer inspection.
Thomas Linder was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1986. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California and is the co-founder of BBQLA.
www.thomaslinder.com