As complex and flavorful as our terrestrial world is, the sum
of it is made up of surprisingly few components, pieced together in endless
possible ways. The further we reduce our focus in scale, the less diverse our
group of building blocks becomes, with the occasional scientific surprise that
makes us reconsider everything. With a similar, self-imposed restriction of
source forms and materials, sculptor Hannah Thompsett produces a wealth of
possible outcomes. For her most recent body of work, “Suspended Arrangements,”
currently showing at the Genesee Center’s Firehouse Gallery, Thompsett displays
her work dramatically and includes some simple tricks of light to showcase the
forms and enhance the way we experience them.
“Suspended Arrangements” marks the end of Thompsett’s second
residency at the Genesee Center, and continues a project she began to explore
during her first residency, showcased in the “Potentiality” exhibit held at the
Center last August. It all began with a line drawing on paper, which Thompsett folded
to create volume, until she collected a vast array of ephemeral permutations of
geometric forms. She then slip-cast those forms to preserve them
in ceramic. For this exhibit, she continued this exploration of form,
but also built tables, pedestals, and wall-mounted framing furniture, with
built-in reflective surfaces and captured shadows of the forms, to show off
many perspectives of the pieces at once.
The infinite ways matter manifests from ultimately simple and
seemingly finite resources can be surprising and inspiring. In a sense, we
exist in a giant fractal — we can identify the repetition of similar forms on
macro and micro levels everywhere, unconsciously existing as effective answers
to problems great and small. For example, one key shape or pattern of the
universe is the spiral. Once we focus in on the components, we begin to notice
the presence of the components or patterns throughout the complex structures
around and within us.
The same is true when identifying the basic component in
Thompsett’s forms — a repeating triangle, or fragments of it, which manifest as
fans, pyramids, and perhaps most unexpectedly, a tower of concave cubes.
Elegant and modern, sharp but organic, the forms resemble all
manner of things: microscopic organisms, crystal shards, exotic flora,
architecture, a crown, art-deco furniture, spiny beetles, abstracted faces and
figures. They all balance elegantly on flat seams or points where lines meet.
Thompsett’s artist statement declares
that “Suspended Arrangements” is an exploration of the relationships between
the objects we collect and other items in the collection, as well as the spaces
they inhabit. In the interest of enhancing this meditation and maximizing the
impact of her thesis, the artist has cleared away all that is unnecessary and
distracting. Crisp, white forms are displayed concurrently with crisp, simple
manipulations that shift how we view the works, and cast against clean, black
frames and tables with legs that echo the geometry found in the work.
Natural materials in limited hues — clay, wood, glass, and
distilled light — balance one another in stark contrast, so complexities in the
forms are emphasized. All of the objects are matte except for the glass. Gray
tones are introduced by the play of light and shadow, and reflections on the geometry.
Titles too would be a frivolity, in the way of the point, so Thompsett simply
numbers her “Arrangements.”
Glass-topped custom tables and pedestals reflect forms from
below. These are made of smooth black wood that holds its own as a foil for the
uniformly pale ceramics. “Framed” forms are placed on wall-mounted, L-shaped
black wood structures that are anchored to the walls. Each frame encloses a
photogram of the object behind and below the object, safe under panes of glass that
also reflect the object from behind and beneath it. So in addition to the
volume of the actual object, viewers experience a sort of ghost volume and depth
through the shadows and reflections.
Thompsett layers additional dimensions to the forms, shadows,
and reflections, with the strange, captured light-shadows of the photograms.
Each 3D object is experienced not only from shifting perspectives as viewers
move around the pieces, but simultaneously experienced through its shadow on
the glass, through its reflection on the glass, and through its photogram. All of
these bright and faded and dark shapes are layered and dynamic as the viewer
shifts perspective. The photograms also stand to solidify a sort of permanent
record of the form’s placement, while the shadows and reflections are
ever-changing.
There is such elegance in the angles of the forms, and
elegance in the balance of them, and in the reflections layering with shadow, and
in the way the photograms soften the razor sharp edges. The staging turns the forms’
craggy peaks into shifting dunes of light. The show is a study in complexity, and
possibilities, and Thompsett is sculpting with light as much as with clay,
wood, and glass.
Thompsett’s double residency gave her
the opportunity to explore and share concepts, to show and sell work among a
creative community and audience. Her work is as captivating as crystals, and
lends the haunted feeling you might get from those objects as light passes
through them, as if a presence lingers there.
Brilliant physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla is quoted as
having said that “in a crystal we have the clear evidence of the existence of a
formative life-principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a
crystal, it is nonetheless a living being.” Just as a crystal’s form and growth
is determined by the presence of a specific mineral, but ultimately manifests
in countless ways, Thompsett’s forms each possess the same seed that flowers in
unpredicted varieties. Her work reveals a fascination with possibility, and
this is a project without a conceivable finish point. Ultimately, the creator
has to pick a place to stop tinkering.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2014.
