Christian Andersen, Frederiksholms Kanal 28A, 1220 Copenhagen K, +45 2537 4101, info@christianandersen.net
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Press release
Christian Andersen is pleased to present the first gallery exhibition of Tom Humphreys in Denmark. An avowed studio artist, Humphreys records his slight observations and elementary choices through printing, painting and drawing while staring the anachronistic profession squarely in the face.
The surrounding world is reconfigured, a Mikita cordless drill illustrates its use with spiralling turns and amplifies an object we never see, a condom is remade as a woodcut, loose foot prints from a job centre recruitment poster find their way to the edge of abstraction. Using a car mirror as a tool to draw a head; artifice, exaggeration, texture, surface and style live without hierarchy. The image and method are equal. To be the windshield wiper of a car or to be the tissue in a deep tissue massage is the same. While at the same time the hurricane and the steam engine are part and parcel of the same basic elements, scale is also a non issue in this constellation. The works remain the same size only the frame grows. Time is also conflated, 4 hours of 2006 and 20 minutes of 2012 share an apartment, estranged yet docked in their new context and freed from their A4 coffins.
As an experimental sous chef explores mango and butter bean combinations, Humphreys’ fish sauce still has a pulse. The distance between inspiration and application result in an unlikely brew where it is possible to paint a taste or draw out a smell and a discriminating palette where everything allowed is made visible.
Will Benedict, April 2012