NEW YORK, NY.- Flowers presents a survey exhibition by acclaimed British artist Tom Phillips titled Tom Phillips Works in 2, 2½ & 3 Dimensions. The show will run from October 8th through October 30th.
The exhibition showcases the artists fascination with the definitions of and relationships between objects, text and images. Phillips uses mixed media such as mud, hair, wire, collage and orange peel to create works which reference various literary and philosophical geniuses.
In Beckett Again 2010, an oil on palette work, Phillips splits the final quote from the famous Samuel Beckett novel, The Unnamable: I cant go on, Ill go on. Each half is placed on opposite sides of the palette allowing the viewer to choose a phrase to ponder upon entering and leaving the gallery.
Ludwig Wittgensteins provocative assertion, The limits of my language are the limits of my world, is spelled out twice in reverse on each side of the piece titled, Wittgensteins Dilemma 1999. In this silkscreen on acrylic cube, Phillips manages to simultaneously concur with and refute the statement. The words create the structure, and yet require the viewer to read them through the center with its infinite shifting reflections therein, thus becoming limitless.
A prominent figure in contemporary music, art, film, stage design, literature and criticism, Phillips is known for his pioneering explorations of word and image and his forty-year long Humument project, exhibited in part at Flowers in 2005 and in 2007 at the Dean Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh.
Born in London in 1937, Tom Phillips attended St. Catherines College, Oxford and Camberwell School of Art. He was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1989 and was Chairman of the Royal Academys Exhibitions Committee from 1995 to 2007. He has had retrospective exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery, London; The Royal Academy, London; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and The Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.