Peter Thomashow “Laboratory of Colour: Material Culture from a Parallel Universe”

Project: ARTspace

This event has ended.

A lone scientist, Professor Wolfson and great grandfather of Peter Thomashow, working in the foothills of Vermont combined all sorts of items from the turn of the nineteenth century America to facilitate his color experiments. Working on his experiments in secret he created a parallel universe of play.

Some years later a psychiatrist from New York City relocated to Vermont and ended up in the home of the former Professor Wolfson. Here he discovered the lost experiments of Professor Wolfson and has reassembled them.

Project: ARTspace presents Laboratory of Colour: Material Culture from a Parallel Universe, a solo exhibition of two and three-dimensional collages by Peter Thomashow. Thomashow’s parallel universe is made up of Americana he has been collecting since the 1960s. A handful of bottle caps, wooden blocks, marbles, matchboxes, and old toys might seem simple and obsolete to most, but to Peter represent much more. After a careful and systematic arrangement, patterns of color, shapes, and texture emerge from the uncovered memorabilia.

Thomashow’s material culture explores the interdisciplinary relationship between art, play, and science, while invoking a sense of childhood spirit and nostalgia. Using illusionary devices such as magnets and symmetry, Peter’s work inspires further investigation beyond it’s visual properties. At the heart of Thomashow’s collages lies his intrigue with the unseen; memory, color theory, geometry, and invisible forces.

Peter Thomashow (b. 1953) is a physician, outsider artist, collector, and musician. His collages and assemblages have been exhibited at The Outsider Art Fair in New York City, and in various shows in Vermont, New York, and Hong Kong. His works remains in a variety of collections in the United States and Europe, and Hong Kong. The artist holds a Medical Degree from New York University School of Medicine, teaches Psychiatry at Dartmouth College School of Medicine, and currently lives and works in Vermont.