ArtSeen
Thomas Trosch
Fredericks Freiser Gallery

“Easy access,” I’ve heard art dealers say, is what their clients are looking for in their art excursions these days. Problem is, with the glut of galleries, fairs, and massive “new talent” shows like the Armory Show, Scope, Working in Brooklyn, the Whitney Biennial, and Greater New York, it’s gone beyond “easy access” to something approaching force-feeding. If we were French geese, our aesthetic livers would explode. Fortunately, for those with a more adventurous nature, art observers pursuing the more extreme off-the-tourist-track fair, there are occasional opportunities to catch a glimpse of artwork that doesn’t fit the “taste of the week” club. Recent shows by both Chris Martin uptown at Uta Scharf and Geoff Davis at Andre Zarre in Chelsea demonstrate that sometimes the gatekeepers of good decorum, and the bottom line, are asleep at the switch.
Thomas Trosch is another example of an artist who, though not a household name, is held in high regard by enthusiasts of the marginal, eccentric, and totally personal statement. Trosch is an acquired taste, and though not a taste of the week, he could be of next year. The Very, Very Best of Thomas Trosch is a mini retrospective covering work from about the past fifteen years, and though there are progressions, developments, and changes, the uniqueness of his vision is clear. Trosch, for all his cultivated kinks and excruciating mannerisms, shows he’s in possession of painterly skills that can convincingly combine a variety of techniques, from wispy pencil lines on bare canvas to drippy opaque washes, from peanut-butter-thick knifing to thrown and tube-squeezed paint blobs. This diversity of surface incident recalls the better periods of Cy Twombly, and his scrawling drawings are enhanced with thick clumps of paint.
The feminine focus on ladies who lunch, who visit artists’ studios and vernissages, who sip cocktails and have lovely matching accessories, reduces the males present to mere extras. The extravagant, almost sculptural thickness of the figures, the unapologetic decorativeness, and the exceedingly sweet colors have admittedly linked Trosch’s work to that of Florine Stettheimer, the 57th Street heiress and hostess of one of New York’s grand Jazz Age salons. A more contemporary comparison might be made with the dramatic narrative pieces by Nicolas Africano. “Japanese Lesson #17” (1992) is the earliest and one of the largest pieces in this show. It combines women with large bug eyes and text bubbles filled with conversations from phrase books designed for visiting businessmen. Though both of these devices seem to have disappeared in the more recent pieces, considering the dates, they should be seen as precursors to the anime fad of characters with oversized eyes that has been presented so often recently, as well as the rant-containing bubbles produced by Amy Wilson that when seen in quantity read as left-wing schtick. Trosch seems to revel in the discordant contrasts thrown up by his style of freewheeling paint slinging and his depictions of doll-like society ladies. The artist uses backgrounds of abstract expressionist paintings and biomorphic sculpture as a painterly foil to the elegant women in pastel evening gowns and platinum blonde hairdos strolling among a collection of art objects displayed as prestige commodities. This disturbing discrepancy reads like an image of the 1950s layout wherein “profoundly ugly” Pollocks are props for fashion models, rendered by a painter channeling both Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois.
Contributor
James KalmJAMES KALM has written extensively on the Brooklyn art scene. In 2006 he began posting video reviews of local art exhibitions at his two YouTube channels that have generated over six million views.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
73. (Various museums and galleries)
By Raphael RubinsteinOCT 2021 | The Miraculous
A group of artists, gallery owners, and museum employees issue a call for museums and art galleries in New York City to close for one day as an act of protest against a war the U.S. is conducting in a faraway country. The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and the Jewish Museum, plus many art galleries, comply with this request. Only two major museums decline, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (which does, however, delay the opening of an exhibition for one day) and the Guggenheim Museum, which is then picketed.

Silvia Moreno-Garcias Silver Nitrate and Brenda Lozanos Witches
By Yvonne C. GarrettSEPT 2023 | Books
Although these two novels are very different in tone, focus, structure, and style, they share central themes of the societal structures that attempt to oppress and define women and the powerful magic women can accessthough the magic present in each novel derives from very different sources.
Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
By Payton McCarty-SimasJUNE 2022 | Film
Replete with kidnappings, superfan and superspy antics, and references to Cage’s filmography that only the most dedicated Cage acolyte will be able to catch, the film is designed as a love letter to, as Cage himself describes in the film, the actor’s “contribution to one of the oldest professions: storytelling and mythmaking.”
Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers
By Annabel KeenanSEPT 2023 | ArtSeen
In Flags of Our Mothers, Raven Halfmoon honors her Caddo heritage and ancestors while pushing back against Indigenous silencing. With monumental hand-built stoneware sculptures filling the galleries of The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, she claims space for Indigenous peoples, herself included. The sheer size and weight of the figural sculptures command attention. As she works, Halfmoon considers the lived experiences of her ancestorstheir traditions and the impact of colonizationand seeks to empower her community and uplift their stories. At the same time, she reflects more broadly on the rich heritage of Indigenous peoples, as well as their own tragedies as colonizers forced them off their land. The evidence of her emotions is preserved in the glaze, divots, indentations, and figures that adorn the surfaces of her work.