A selection of articles about Thomas Pihl
(click on image to read full article)

SIGHTINGS

At the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of Thomas Pihl at Museum Kode in Bergen, Norway 2021, ASAP Gallery in collaboration with the artist present this publication. 

In “Sightings” we are invited to look through the eyes of the artist Thomas Pihl. We see the world as if through his eyes.

We are struck by the intensity of colors he discovers in his everyday surroundings, by the reflections that are cast by everyday objects and situations and which take on unexpected new shapes, presence, color or materiality. Cars are suddenly not just cars anymore, we discover beauty and color in a dirty curtain in a rundown café, we recognize a breathtaking painting in the leftover brushstrokes on a wall in the subway. Nature moves and shifts color when observed by Thomas Pihl. He takes us with him on his strolls through New York City where he lives and works and we accompany the artist on his walks through the countryside in Norway. We recognize the shapes, dissolving forms and shimmering colors we know from his paintings and sculptures.

We also see pictures of the studio of the artist, the space where the artist struggles, discovers, contemplates, mourns, thinks and rejects. It is where the transformation from ideas to finished artworks takes place.  

The middle section is devoted to works of Thomas Pihl.

We will not explain the work in terms of contemporary art critique, nor in art historian categories. Be amazed, wander with the artist and be swept away in what really observing might offer you instead of merely looking without seeing at what is around us.

Sight Specific

The history of monochrome painting goes back more than a century. Since Kazimir Malevich revolutionized the art world in 1915 with his "Black Square," which was based on a single color surface, this artistic form of expression has taken many different paths and never lost its ability to fascinate. The distinctive works of Norwegian painter Thomas Pihl join, continue and enlarge this tradition: if they tell a story, it's the process of their own making and the physical and mental spaces that they are exposed to. They invite the viewer to interact, provoke thought, and give rise to discussion. In his works, Pihl applies the colors to the canvas in many layers, allowing a view of the traces of the working process. The resulting visual world, which in its play of light and color shows us the nature of perception, is now summarized for the first time in a comprehensive publication.