Beginnings of dematerialized space/containment through exercising imagination, then exercising active practice? (ready to go), 2022

One wall in each room painted chromakey green

Unique, detail

Husband Chair (KB), 2022

Leg 1: 332 x 125 cm, height 173 cm

Leg 2: 421 x 80 cm, height 173 cm

Coated fabric Delinova 100, color 7211, monochrome

External blower with dimmer and silencer

Vertical inner cloths approx. every 30 cm

Dirt photo (guarded)/Dirt photo (vulnerable), 2022

Archival pigment prints on paper the scale of Deana Lawson’s Barrington and Father, 2021

Ink jet prints, each in Pine Nature wood frames

Each 194 x 154 cm, detail

* guarded photo must be installed in a location that renders it inaccessible, covered or dismembered, blocked

* vulnerable photo must be installed in a location that renders it fully accessible both visually and physically, unblocked

SoiL Thornton’s work and persona resist categorization along preconceived notions of genre, medium, artistic subjectivity, biography, as well as gendered and racial identity. A 2012 Cooper Union graduate based in Brooklyn, New York, their work has since been exhibited widely and internationally. Until mid-2020 known by their given name Torey, they have been traversing boundaries between media such as painting and sculpture. In turn, their work expands to collage and installation, and they frequently act as a curator. 

A steady play with language and meaning can be grasped in their work and exhibition titles, perhaps most strikingly in Painting (2017): Hung on the wall, this work consists of a large steel saw blade adorned with a series of found painted rocks. In their practice, they have been working against the grain of some of the art world’s conventions, from medium specificity to questions of branding and commodification. In so doing, they inquire into modes of circulation of works of art and how artist-personas accrue value. To the artist, renegotiating the limits of artistic media and conventions of presentation seem as crucial as unsettling expectations and conceptions of identity directed at individuals––above all, artists.