ONLINE CATALOGUE
14.09.2024 - 27.10.2024
Opening Saturday September 14th from 5 - 8 pm
Gallery Season Afterparty 8pm - late
No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to present A scallop has two hundred eyes; twelve paintings on what they might see, the first solo exhibition by Dutch painter Tobias Thaens with the gallery. Affirming the continuous interconnectedness of the natural and the artistic, Thaens builds androgynous worlds, wherein organic matter becomes interwoven in the threads of sensitivity and vulnerability.
As butterflies drink the tears of crocodiles, turtles, and birds, the observer is invited to an intimate meeting between two different entities - nature and culture, biology and poetry - all trying to make sense of the reality surrounding them. In a macrocosm and on canvas, through his painting practice, Thaens instils a shade of romance in the vastness of the everyday.
Drawing inspiration from Canadian poet Anne Carson, Thaens aligns himself with the author in an attempt to “entertain a question, without conclusion but not without interest,” to break free from the code that instrumentalises how we describe and perceive the world. While Carson’s practice lies in the realm of language, for Thaens, it is in imagery. Upholding the idea of broadening a space for poetry and for art, whereby one is able to make connections beforehand invisible, is the thread that pulls Thaens to Carson’s writing and allows him to perform a transfer of an in-between space – the space betwixt blossoming and decaying – from page onto canvas, from a word to a brushstroke, from a memory to a landscape.
Thaens finishes his paintings without ever finishing them; he constructs them amidst juxtapositions and parallels, worlds and entities, and leaves them to breathe, to continue their cycle of existence right then and there. They allude to a multiplicity of meanings and beings. This fluid world of the in-between, is an invitation to an indwelling dialogue between the artist and that which is being painted; oftentimes enveloping nonhuman creatures, such as arthropods, crustaceans, and fungi, encouraging conversations between dissimilar others.
Whether a friend’s bag or the colour of their hair, the details embedded in his mental archive open up the doors to the artist’s exploration of viscerality, ephemerality, and intimacy, in an attempt to broaden, extend, and stretch. For Thaens, this necessitates a process whereby he imagines the nonhuman others perceiving, experiencing, and remaining just as he perceives, experiences, and remains. In Whisper (Lieveling), he paints a scene upon which he imagines how a bat would see with echolocation. By and of itself, the abstract nature of Thaens’ paintings requires the viewer to look for points of departure, or rather – the entities of departure, so as to grasp fibres of familiarity and existence with the work. Red strokes flowing through a friend’s hair inch close towards vesicles travelling in the intercellular fluid, while the texture of their bag edges onto an enchanting exoskeleton. And yet, if the work does not contain the initial object anymore, what does it become?
As a landscape of eyes touching eyes and layers peeking at layers, A scallop has two hundred eyes; twelve paintings on what they might see can be read through the imagery of skin. Shimmering, translucent, reflecting light just as scales, singing in rubato, peeling layers of comfort, injecting a meeting of others, demanding an inquisitive gaze.
Text by Zuzia Szatkowska
A scallop has two hundred eyes; twelve paintings on what they might see extends to both gallery locations: Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327 and Bos en Lommerweg 88 and runs until October 27th 2024. For more information or inquiries contact info@nomansart.com
Photos by Neeltje de Vries
Tobias Thaens (Eindhoven, NL, 1999) is a painter who graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the AKI Academy for Art & Design, Enschede, the Netherlands, in 2021 and completed his residency at De Ateliers, Amsterdam, in 2023. Thaens’ paintings offer the artist’s reflections on the hard contrasts between form and function, which dissolve into one another uninterrupted, revealing the fluidity of existence and the interconnectedness of distinct energies.
Through a deep fascination with animals utilising camouflage, the artist brings to light a shared visual language of organisms within an ecosystem, where colours and shapes follow each other and the agency they hold changes over time. An androgynous world where nature dynamically alters its skin pattern and colour, a series of perceptive and emotional depths lay ahead. This exploration bleeds out into the intimate experience, blurring the line between biology and poetics. Through this permeation, Thaens instils in the viewer a lasting curiosity for the discourse of perception and interpretation.
Since graduating from AKI, Thaens has participated in exhibitions at Ballroom Projects, BE, Woonhuis, NL, De Ateliers, NL, and Gerard Hofland (NL).
Tobias Thaens in his studio, 2024