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Austin Thomas’ Metropolis exhibition (through September 3 at Municipal Bonds) is a shout of geometry. When entering the gallery, there is an ambience of clarity and silence amidst movement that is synonymous with a metropolis like New York City, the artist’s hometown and the basis of the exhibition. On display is a series of modest abstract monotypes on found paper, which, as Thomas describes, use “a vocabulary of rectangles, triangles and trapezoids”, which represent the harmonic cacophonies endemic in city life.
Thomas constructs geometric color fields that find order in chaos; in color block compositions such as formation, overlapping geometries of airy blue and blue-green against dotted gray tones evoke fateful coincidences of crossed paths and chance encounters. The intersecting circles in this work and in others such as Circles of Oranges, Berries, and Grapes are reminiscent of the feeling of confusing your eyes as the city lights change and dance. Thomas’ prints evoke this apparently dissonant simultaneity of frenetic noise and contemplative silence. Being surrounded by crowds and feeling completely alone. Always be on the move and be completely still.
Austin Thomas, “Circles Of Oranges, Berries, Grapes”, 2017. Ink on paper
Strolling through the gallery feels like a tour of the city’s modernist architecture, with towering glass and steel edges rising from a flowing sea of bodies below. One can imagine the artist switching off while taking a walk, leaving everything else aside and looking up to notice how light and shadow dance over a glazed skyscraper. With its gridded composition of yellow, red, green and gray tones on vintage ledger paper, Muted Rectangles is reminiscent of the glow of apartment buildings at night, each window a sphere of unique tungsten and neon lights that evokes the human presence inside recall.
In the Netflix series Pretend It’s A City, the author and New York pundit-in-residence Fran Lebowitz walks through the streets of Manhattan, through the perpetual labyrinth of corpses, crosswalks, skyscrapers and traffic. However, in the midst of this incessant noise, the city may only speak to you. Lebowitz notes that she reads various cement-embedded plaques across town as if only she could see them. Thomas’ prints embody that feeling: to find unique moments of intimacy and everyday beauty that maybe only you can see.
Austin Thomas, “Black Holes, Gravitational Waves”, 2019. Ink on proof paper (diptych)
Thomas conveys this feeling in the visual symphonies of works such as Black Holes, Gravitational Waves. The angular geometries of the monochrome print, which merge with organic waves, are reminiscent of the spatial interactions of abstract geometric shapes in constructivist photograms by László Moholy-Nagy. In this overcrowded composition, some shapes seem to lure the viewer, like a centrally placed black trapezoid protruding into a faded gray circle and allowing a moment to pause in the whirlwind.
The most striking thing about Thomas’ work in Metropolis is the undeniable auditory quality of the prints. Works like Repeating Patterns and Coloring Book (Turquoise) are the visual jazz soundtrack of a city: a syncopated harmony of different forms that merge on a single level. You remember Missing Sounds of New York City, an album released by the New York Public Library in the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic: an audible love letter to the city at a time when residents were after longed for the unshakable noise of the past. pandemic city life.
Austin Thomas, “Chromatic Intensities Of Chartreuse”, 2016. Ink on Pantone paper
Tracks on this album like Serenity is a Rowdy City Park instantly merge with the dualities in Thomas’ work in Metropolis, solace in the pulsating electricity of urban space. The percussive honking of taxi horns, voices calling out to someone on the side of the road, rain knocking on concrete, trains pulling into a subway station with their string orchestras: contrast and discord somehow become a melody.
Though the work was inspired by another city, its presentation at Municipal Bonds in San Francisco is certainly reminiscent of the unique rhythms and harmonies here. From the ringing of the Muni trams to crashing waves and crackling campfires on Ocean Beach to the eerie hum that recently emanated from the Golden Gate Bridge, Austin Thomas’ Metropolis reminds us that every city sings its own song.
AUSTIN THOMAS: METROPOLIS runs through September 3rd at the Municipal Bonds Gallery in SF. More information here.
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