Tom Anholt “New Work, New York”

1969 Gallery

This event has ended.

My friend invited me to New York City to make works for an exhibition at his new gallery. He found a 500 sq-ft studio at 195 Chrystie Street, and I swapped my Berlin apartment for one in Greenpoint.

These 20 paintings (8 canvas, 12 paper) comprise my entire output in the studio (start date: March 18) and give literal meaning to the exhibition title. They also reflect the City’s influence on me during a visit to the Egyptian wing at the Metropolitan Museum, observing the multi-layered and fast-paced daily street life of New Yorkers, and tuning into the current political climate - perhaps figurative painting with its focus on people and narrative will reassert its relevance and power in a contemporary context.

My friend and I have known each other for three years. He says that looking at my paintings have taken him on a thematic journey from memory to dream to myth and now …to time. The painted scraps of canvas and linen affixed to the surfaces remind him of tapestry - though this new element challenges my practice and creates accidental, sophisticated moments of puzzling and pixelation.

“These paintings have abstraction and figuration turned up to full,” says my new painter-friend. “They aren’t short stories. They are poems.”

Thank you, 1969 – after 53 days, I also :heart: NY.

Tom Anholt, born 1987, studied at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London and currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He has had solo and group exhibitions most recently at Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen, Project B Gallery, Milan, Eigen+Art Lab, Berlin, Josh Lilley Gallery, London, and 1969, New York City.

Tom Anholt: New Work, New York marks his debut solo exhibition in New York City.