Mr. Thomson’s current work depicts the interaction between individuals and an

urban environment. Street Scenes is interested in the way the everyday can

become elevated in seemingly ordinary circumstances. In his own words, “From behind the

camera the city streets become a theater of sorts, a drama that enthralls

because the characters lack awareness of the stage–as a result their

performances are totally raw. I find myself drawn to this unbounded territory

for photographic observation.”

The haunting operatic interiors and florid Floridian landscapes in Arnold Mesches’s work conjure the very human desire to seek refuge and, at the same time, suggest the sometimes sinister forces conspiring to prevent one from securing that state of being. Mesches is a native New Yorker, now eighty-five years of age, who has lived and painted prolifically in New York, Los Angeles, and now Florida. He has dramatically dissented from the status quo through a lifetime of passionate artmaking. He energetically battles political and social climates in large-scale gestural painting and drawing. Critic Robert Storr, in his 2007 essay “By the Rivers of Babylon,” describes Mesches as showing us “with grinning irony” those “compound ambiguities” of “modern civilization on the brink.” Presented in Rhode Island for the first time will be selections from Mesches’s series of paintings Coming Attractions.Also on display in the hall space gallery will be selections from The FBI Files, which comprise mixed-media collages derived from federal government surveillance documents that charted Mesches’s activities for thirty years and that he gathered through the Freedom of Information Act (the artist knowingly describes these as contemporary illuminated manuscripts). His work can be sampled at his award-winning Web site: www.arnoldmesches.com

This exhibition is co-curated by gallery director James Montford and guest curator Judith Tolnick Champa.
 

Bannister Gallery
Rhode Island College - Roberts Hall, 124
600 Mt. Pleasant Ave.
Providence, RI 02908
Tel. (401) 456-9765
 

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday, 11:00 am - 5:00 pm
Thursdays - 12:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Closed - Weekends & Holidays