NADA New York

Thomas Kovachevich

Gardens and Fountains

NADA NYC 2017

Booth # 414

The images of flowers that their names bring to mindcould be wilder than actual flowers. It is these flowers of the mind that could be triggered by words that Tom paints. However, he does not start with language. There are other and multiple sources for the flowers paintings. One source for the flowers starts with Tom’s own artworks: small sculptures comprised of found vacuum-formed plastic packaging, sometimes melted, that he paints with acrylic (more plastic) colors. Tom then paints portraits of these painted objects onto foot-square black canvases.

Eventually the paintings detached from portrait making and developed their own visuality. Tom started painting on pieces of black corrugated plastic, the same materia lthat he used to make the gallery installation. But now, the slipperworts and chokeberry bunches, the impatiens, hyacinths, wind flowers, narcissus and bearded iris, the poppy anemone and spirea, are all there, and yet they are not. New species emerge in the paintings, separate from but connected to sources that have passed through Tom’s process of art making.

In addition, the booth contains a series of framed drawings on reflective gold mylar that have been painted with water repellant. These works can be understood as performance objects, even while they retain the sense of mirrors as agents of representation. While face up on a table, water poured into the unpainted areas clings to those areas, held back by the repellant. And when the water evaporates the residue becomes a new drawing to be reinstalled on the wall. The artworks are the result of events that take place within the systems defined by the artist.

Thomas Kovachevich was born in Detroit, MI, and lives and works in New York. He has had many solo exhibitions including those at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Significant group exhibitions include Documenta 5, and appearances in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, COCO Kunstverein, Vienna, and at Hamburger Banhof, Berlin. His work is included in many notable collections, including The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and the Bern Kunst Museum, Switzerland.

For additional information please contact Photi Giovanis at info@callicoonfinearts.com or 212 219 0326.