Thomas Zipp

The Worlds Most Complete Congress Of Strange Birds

August 28th –
October 31th, 2009
Gstaad
  • Thomas Zipp
    M bird (P T. P) III,2009
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    110 x 70 cm
  • Thomas Zipp
    M bird (P. T. P) VI,2009
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    110 x 90 cm
  • Thomas Zipp
    M bird (P T. P) VII,2009
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    120 x 100 cm
  • Thomas Zipp
    M bird (P T. P) I,2009
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    120 x 100 cm
  • Thomas Zipp
    M bird (P T. P.) IX,2009
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    130 x 90 cm
  • Thomas Zipp
    M bird (P. T. P) VIII,2009
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    240 x 120 cm

Culminating from a wide range of reference points including artistic and political history, science, theatre, and spiritual and ideological beliefs, Zipp’s works examine the nature of power and propose alternative systems of interpretation and cultural hierarchy. Mapping the corrupt and mysterious gulf between thought and representation, this new body of works is comprised of drawings and paintings that explore the notion of social facade its underlying psychology.

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In a series of nine collaged drawings, Zipp introduces the cast of his dystopian narrative: image-figures taken from 20th century politics and culture are transformed into ‘masks’, interchangeable and malleable identities for appropriation. Demonically pierced with rivets for eyes, and donned with popeish black caps they form a council of secretive order, simultaneously menacing and absurd. Their archive-grainy resolution and ominously nonsensical speech bubbles reaffirm a portent of breakdown, dysfunction and malice.

Accompanied by nine paintings, each corresponding to a drawing, Zipp’s abstract tableaux operate as windows of consciousness, revealing the inner ‘truth’ of his characters. Executed in deadened grey-brown palettes, intensely applied masses of hue spill and congeal as psycho-sexual terrains, moribundly fleshy, hairy, and cavernous. Veering from scatological fields of frenzied brushwork, bezoars of coagulated washes, to crudely rendered graphic symbols (a tempest and vulva among them), Zipp approaches painting as an intrinsically physical act, conveying the mystical and primal with quixotic immediacy and instinct.

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