THRUSH HOLMES – ALL LIT UP ON WINE
2014-02-10Splaying wood panels with exuberant spray paint and slapdash neon tubing, Holmes’ unapologetic methods elevate the still life, the reclining nude figure, and even poetry from their traditional banality to culty, fetishistic status. With the gestural fluidity of Twombly and the poetic dexterity of Basquiat, his intuitive, swaggering practice reveals eccentric florals, brazen silhouettes, glowing prose, and monumental “TH” initials – an arresting display of drunken ego and flexing machismo, rife also with subtle romanticism and raw honesty.
Behold a psychedelic underworld where smears, splatters, and drips of paint coalesce into familiar form, swooping petals and blinged-out physiques that oscillate between the manual prowess of representation and the improvisational violence of abstraction. Pure gesture takes center stage and distills form down to its bare essence, crowned by keyed-up frames in fluorescent hues and brilliant lights. With all the virtuoso of graffiti and John Hancocks loud enough to proverbially piss their territory, each work simultaneously binges on its own sense of power and exercises mature restraint.
Exhibition runs through to March 1st, 2014
Mike Weiss Gallery
520 West 24th Street
New York
NY
10011
