STUX + HALLER is pleased to announce the opening of Thordis Adalsteindottirʼs sixth solo exhibition at our gallery, willing to go on... New Paintings.
This exhibition marks a stylistic shift in Thordis Adalsteinsdottirʼs painting. The artist has unbridled her brush, exploring figures with a layered, vigorous saturation that is definite and new in her work. The characteristic color fields and hand-painted patterns remain, but she now populates them with figures rendered in brushy, dimensional detail that reflects a new treatment of space and figuration.
Recent extended trips abroad to Thailand must have influenced her signature details, those Lilliputian figures and objects we are encouraged to discover in every Thordis painting. A trove of gritty elements awaits our notice; tattoos, cigarettes, bubbles, latex gloves, and a gas mask are but a few.
The sculptures in this exhibition highlight Thordisʼ ability to conjure a playful, yet simultaneously savage, alternate reality. A man with giant hands and vacant eyes looms over a tiny creature clinging to its parachute improvised from polka-dot underpants. Both man and creature are presented in a crude, childish style that recalls Dubuffet, achieving a sort of 21st century surrealist art brut.
