This fall at the Kunsthal: Thomas J Price
April 22, 2024
This fall, Kunsthal Rotterdam will be presenting the first solo exhibition in the Netherlands of the British artist Thomas J Price (1981, London). With high-profile work spanning various media, including sculpture, performance, photography, and animation, Price constantly bends the conventions of materials, scale, and presentation. The artist focuses on themes like representation and how we relate to power in society. In this large-scale retrospective, the Kunsthal will be showing a wide variety of works from Price’s two-decade-spanning career: from the early performance Licked (2001) up to recent sculptures like A Place Beyond (2022).
Central to Price’s figurative sculptures are the following questions: Who is acknowledged by society? Who is represented? Who is given the opportunity to be seen? Price embodies everyday, fictional characters in his psychological portraits, and confronts the viewer with stereotypes surrounding representation and identity. An example of this is the almost four-metre-high sculpture Moments Contained, which has been standing in front of Rotterdam Central Station since 2023. It depicts a black woman wearing Nike trainers with her fists clenched in the pockets of her sweatpants. Do viewers recognise themselves, someone they know, or does she confront them with their own prejudices? The sculpture has already been subjected to a wide range of reactions.
Multidisciplinary
Over the course of his career, Price has been working in other media as well, including photography, painting, and animation. At the Kunsthal all these disciplines will be shown.
Collaboration
The exhibition Thomas J Price. Matter of Place is part of a European tour in collaboration with Kunsthalle Krems (27 April - 22 September 2024) and Arnolfini, Bristol (8 March - 1 June 2025), and is realised in collaboration with the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
