Untitled, 1967

Basel 2018
Untitled

Georg Kargl Fine Arts

Sculpture
dispersion on canvas
72.5 x 72.5 x 5.5 (厘米)
28.5 x 28.5 x 2.2 (吋)
Thorn’s work oscillates between classical visual formats and objects that take on the character of architecture. Structures are explored as well as the perspective of perception and the impact of light on the resulting texture. In the 50s and 60s he abandoned the "formula of phatos" in order to concentrate on a reductionist directions, playing with irony and wit with the form itself. In this sculpure the small humps penetrade the outside surface and with its regularity they tighten and stabilse a white circle, creating an area of calmness and mediative emptiness. The remaining overlap breaks with the intens clean geometry, a feature that can be found in various art works of the artist. Two different moments are established, an apparent geometric accuracy and a discussion with the matter of texture, formulating a moment of tension. Thorn himself mentioned once, that "nothing is not nothing, exept a breathing surface". A change in the beholder’s perspective makes clear the complex play with structures with shadow and light, omissions and distortions, visible forms, and those first revealed by the movement of the beholder, which Thorn conceives as symbolic.