Thomas Scheibitz
“Abacus”
New York, 521 West 21st Street
Over the past two decades, Thomas Scheibitz has developed his own conceptual language that bridges the realms of figuration and abstraction, at times dissolving them entirely. By using language and forms that suggest numerous meanings, Scheibitz challenges the viewer to consider multiple perspectives.
From an ancient counting device, the uppermost division of a column in architecture, a software for banking systems, a research consortium, to a cult object, Abacus is a word with many different definitions and uses. Beginning with a vocabulary with multiple perspectives, Scheibitz uses this as a parallel to his painting and sculpture practice. Drawing from classical painting and architecture, the contemporary urban landscape, and popular culture, Scheibitz deconstructs and recombines signs, images, shapes, and architectural fragments in ways that question traditional contexts and interpretations.
ABACUS, 2020 Oil, vinyl and pigment marker on canvas 57 1/8 x 45 1/4 x 1 inches; 145 x 115 x 2.5 cm
Consistent with his oeuvre, Scheibitz’s new works bring together selections culled from his vast collection of found imagery. By layering, refining and expanding upon these images taken from the common lexicon of contemporary experience, Scheibitz synthesizes the various forms into compositions that superbly distill the amalgamation of relationships in the final tableau.
Fama, which can be translated from Latin as gossip, fake news, alternative facts or half-knowledge, captures and references the uncertainty and instability of the current political and social moment, but also suggests a general social phenomenon.
The accumulation of recognizable motifs from the artists’s visual lexicon - substitutes of droplets, eyes, vaguely familiar animal forms, and minimally rendered figures - appear throughout Virus 5, Fama and Speicher 1072. Gestural markings are held in a delicate balance by rigorously rendered geometric forms and compositions. Once again, Scheibitz shows his mastery of colors, from steely grey to lurid turquoise, strokes of powdery blues and peach hues contrast the harsh and subtle forms. Consistent with Scheibitz's work over recent years, one can see the layers of paint that have been applied and intuitively painted over in search of the perfect composition. While the final subject matter might appear to be rendered as a flat surface, the complexity and depth created by the interaction of the geometric and abstract forms exhibit an intriguing dimensionality.
At the center of the show, a multifaceted sculpture titled Magnet hangs from the ceiling. The forms that constitute the work are found materials from the artist’s studio - an image of planet Earth positioned between a magnet that corresponds to the renderings of droplets found throughout Scheibitz’ paintings, and an abstract geometrical form resembling a gate. Layers of icons, symbols, materials and techniques act as a simulacrum for the paintings that surround this hanging aggregation.
