What is my work about?
My work evolves from formalist abstraction, material exploration, and figural transformation through collage, drawing, sculpture, and painting. I champion intuitive exploration within a feminist perspective, and an art historical narrative. I am interested in the relationship between abstraction, spirituality, and the cultural consumption of beauty with a fixation on transformation and the experiential. Through this I seek to access a space that slips in and out of language and hierarchy while being grounded in tactility for the body/object.
Artist Statement
Beginning from the principals of collage I utilize painting, drawing, and sculpture through the lens of abstraction to access a physical and psychic search for what it means for something and someone to experience a transformation. I utilize collage to access a fragment in thought, material, and process. By working with elements pulled into isolation I am able to access a meditative space through references that are inherently non-‐objective and filled with the promise of a change such as; makeup, forms based on the female body, sheepskin to glamorize, warm, and conceal. Each piece is worked and tended to alone but with materials pulled from the same dictionary, and to inform the gesture of the following exploration. I am drawn to this process in order to heighten my awareness, sensitivity to detail and dedicate my full attention to each work and allow my cognitive and physical expressions to synchronize. Time becomes linear in making, but the materials and forms morph to create a jagged and cyclical example of time, which exists an act to disrupt hierarchy.
I am interested in making work that functions as a quiet protest through subverting, distorting, and disguising material function through playful, uncanny, and abstract formal gestures. These evolve from my interest in feminist politics, identity, and evolving shifts in expressing the personal experience. I am interested in gestures that are classically grand and inescapably referential to the abstract expressionism, but at the same time shrinking the methodology to frame the process of painting as a meditational experience. All of these gestures are made within the limitations of the expressive and active body, which allows the work to move forward and re-‐experience the touch, post-‐making. I am interested in large scale shifts that absorb and obliterate the body through a primarily perceptual connection, to that of the scale of what can only encase a cognitive and emotional space exists between the top of the brain to the bottom of the heart.
Through my process of making I am interested in a mimicry of materials and referential transformation. With my series made with mascara on paper the “wand” is used to apply the makeup liberally, clumsily, and aggressively worked with is the antithesis of suggested practical use. The result feels somewhere between a woodcut and a charcoal drawing, but the material merges with the object through its attempt to draw into sight and highlight the act of vision and what it means to see and be seen. My work with hair gel began as an exploration in gesture where it is sprayed and squirted liberally like a Jackson Pollock painting referencing a base and joyous expression of self. Over time the liquid evaporates leaving a cartoon like bubbled residue of the process, hardened into what looks similar to a translucent tinted gel medium. This led to my sculptures encasing the gel as a nebulous reductive silhouette of myself, when touched it feels like healing spa device or silicone body augmentations for something that should not exist. The inclusion of hair both animal and human mimes a brushstroke or spray when viewed from afar but becomes unavoidable and disarmingly tactile when viewed closely and remains constantly active as it is affected by shifts in air from a window left or breathing too heavily when close.
CV
EDUCATION
2008 Masters of Fine Arts, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI
2006 Bachelors of Fine Arts, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2011
Highlights, Low Fades, and Deep Cuts, Tiger Strikes Asteroid Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2014
Remixes for Reunions: Rita Crocker and Tracy Thomason, Dow Center for Visual Arts Gallery, Interlochen, MI
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2014
Your Attica on the Pacific, TSA LA, Los Angeles, CA (upcoming)
2013
No Kineme Stands Alone, 106 Green, Brooklyn, NY
MICAPAIRS, 92Y Tribeca, New York, NY
2012
UP/DO, Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York, NY
Pig Party, NEW YORK CITY, New York, NY
Growing Pains, Sadie Halie, Brooklyn, NY
Huzzy, Garden Party Arts, Brooklyn, NY
Grid List, Allegra La Viola, New York, NY
Grid List, Center Galleries, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI
2011
Tracy Thomason and Bettina Yung, MDW Chicago Art Fair, Chicago, IL
Neon Rainbow, French Neon, New York, NY
The Shape of Things to Come, Nudashank Gallery, Baltimore, MD
2010
Rappaport, Thomason, Subkoff & Marnie, James Fuentes LLC, New York, NY
Anti-‐Anti/Non-‐Non, Hal Bromm Gallery, New York, NY
Bring Your Own Art, X-‐Initiative, New York, NY
Born To Die, Secondhome Projects/ Temp IX, Berlin, Germany
2008
The Grey House That Thinks Itself Into Your Head Without Asking, Peter Fingestein Gallery, Pace University, New York, NY
Here and Now-‐ 2008 Graduate Degree Exhibition, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI
2007
Fresh, Lemberg Gallery, Ferndale, MI
X-‐Change Show, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rooney, Kara, “Fresh For(u)ms” Garden Party/Arts, The Brooklyn Rail, September 2012
Feige, Jacob, “Tracy Thomason: Highlights, Low Fades, and Deep Cuts”, Title Magazine, August 2011
Giannini, Melissa, “Peach Fuzz and Cream, Tiger Strikes Asteroid”, August 2011
Rochester, Katherine, August First Friday Picks, review, Philadelphia Weekly, August 2011
Smith, Matthew, “The Shape of Things to Come”, New American Paintings Blog, May 2011
LECTURES AND APPOINTMENTS
Interlochen Center for the Arts, Lecturer for Visual Arts, Summer 2014
Cooper Union, Continuing Education Instructor, Summer/Fall 2014
Guest Critic, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, Fall 2011
Guest Artist, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, Fall 2011
Guest Artist and Critic, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Fall 2010
AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES
2014
The Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency with Dana Schutz, New Smyrna Beach, FL Joan Mitchell Foundation Scholarship Fund, The Atlantic Center for the Arts