Tamika Sur Une Chaise Longue, 2008, mixed media collage, Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York
Mickalene Thomas describes her collages in “More Than Everything” at Lehmann Maupin’s Soho gallery as more accessible than her large paintings. Known for engulfing, rhinestone studded canvasses that overwhelm the viewer in an aesthetic pastiche of 70’s femininity and blaxploitation, Thomas is here giving viewers a glimpse into where it all starts: with a photo taken in a wood paneled corner of her studio.
Though the end result is glittery pop-art meets pin up, these early mock-ups are quiet, intimate works, puzzled together with a keen eye for color and detail. The initial photographs of African American female models are individually collaged into a scene invented by the artist from other photos and found clippings. In Tamika Sur Une Chaise Lounge, (2008) a black female model addresses the camera with an unbroken stare while rather passively lounging on clashing orange drapery. Though clothed, she’s all legs and cleavage; a 70’s Olympia being impinged upon by a busy background patchwork.
In “More Than Everything,” utmost care has been given to framing and presentation. The thick matte borders and sturdy frames lend a precious quality to work that in its initial form is very raw, an amalgam of colored pieces that come up at the edges.
Not all the works are small and intimate. A lone black and white Polaroid portrait of a bare chested woman that faces the viewer as they enter the gallery is striking not only for its size—roughly 2 ½ by 3 feet—but also for its lush black velvet and curved gold frame. As well as for the woman’s steady stare. Three more such images can be found in the adjoining room – two single nude portraits and one intertwined female couple. It’s easy to luxuriate in their sumptuousness, and difficult to resist wanting to run ones hands over the glossy curved edges of the frame or through the velvet mat. The images themselves are tinted chocolate brown and the women’s’ skin glows. But they hearken back to an exploitative tradition that is not so pleasant to recall and tinges the photos with an uncomfortable undercurrent.
Courbet 2 (Melody: Centered), 2011, polaroid, Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York
The collages are presented Salon style, an exhibition method re-popularized by Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo at the birth of modernism in their crowded collection at 27 Rue de Fleurus, Paris. But it dates back to the original Paris Salon that had its heyday in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries where art was hung from floor to ceiling for maximum exhibition space. An artist’s status was defined by how close he or she came to the middle line. Filling up the cavernous space at Lehman Maupin would have been quite a feat with these small works, so instead they are arranged in an amorphous cloud formation upon the wall. Each image bounces off and is influenced by its neighbor. It’s hard to look at them individually, separate from the surrounding colors and scenes.
Though they hold their own as singular objects, it’s fair to say each of Thomas’s works is informed by what she has made before, what she will make after, and the multitude of cultural products she has been influenced by along the way. None of the work can be regarded without a thought to the assertive female characters portrayed by Pam Grier, Matisse’s Odalisques, notions of female beauty as reiterated in artistic depictions of women throughout history, the portrait photos of Carrie Mae Weems, or the conventions and methodologies of art exhibition. It seems a disparate mix, and surely the list goes on. But it is Thomas’s ability to combine elements—whether color and pattern or differing thematic concern—that makes the small works at Lehmann Maupin as attention-grabbing as all her glitter and gold.
–Juliet Helmke
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