Exhibition Review: Denyse Thomasos: just beyond
Criticism Writing: Exhibition Review for Denyse Thomasos: just beyond at the AGO
Exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), December 2022
By Erika Yuen
October 20th, 2022
Humanizing the Exhibit: Objective and Emotional Mediums
Longform Review for Denyse Thomasos: just beyond (2022) at the AGO, curated by Renée van Der Avoid, Sally Frater and Michelle Jacques
How Will I Be Remembered?
Enter the 5th floor of the AGO to Denyse Thomasos’ massive name printed on rectangular, sans- serif font over a towering orange wall. The years (1964-2012) linger in a biography that faces a printed mural of a larger-than-life Thomasos. She works on a green panopticon prison, setting the stage for the next seven chapters of a late artistic career with critical abstraction. Carefully curated paintings, art objects, and supporting media tell excitingly conceptual themes of incarceration, slavery, and immigration that overshadow a simpler story about a woman with a love for paint. Institutions have long imposed objective directions to curate and consume art, but in the context of honouring a legacy, let’s humanize the exhibit, and unify these objective perspectives with the emotional.
How to Curate a Showstopping Show
Curated by Renée van der Avoird of the AGO, Sally Frater of the Art Gallery of Guelph, and Michelle Jacques of Saskatoon’s Remai Modern, Denyse Thomasos: just beyond, is a solo exhibit with over 70 paintings, private collection pieces, and rare works on paper that honour the Toronto raised Trinidadian Canadian artist. Large rooms host larger-than-life abstract acrylic paintings that open and close the exhibit, while small intimate rooms hold their own stories, spirit, and titles.
Behold the large Grid room, where two cross-hatched grids reminiscent of textile samples scale into large floor-to-ceiling paintings like Rally (1994) and Recollect (1994). 2 old ladies sit across Virtual Incarceration, (1999), a monochrome flat brush and marker painting on raw canvas evocative of metal cages and overpopulated urban complexes.
Left: Tickled Restriction (1994), Right: Rally, (1994)
In the background, I overhear “we called it just beyond because Denyse could see the world beyond just as it is” from a guided video. Suppose this beyond-ness better explains the awkward Excavations room extension that abruptly ends the exhibit. This other room bridges a series of work politically responding to 9/11- with travel photos, representational line work, and conspicuous paintings like Excavations: Jaipur Royal Visit (2007), framed in the glory of royal crimson wood. Meanwhile, I’m drawn to the small Artist in Residence, Kingdom Come, and Late Work interior rooms, decorated with process journals, gently framed acrylic on paper, and a delicate twist on urban colours: soft grey, eco-green, and New-York bubble-gum pink. I’m flustered by the contrast of this curated commercial narrative against these private intimate discoveries; how I wish the gallery had captured more diversity in her creative spirit.
Left: Kingdom Come Room, Right: Excavations: Jaipur Royal Visit (2007)
The Macro Institution and Micro Individual: Critical Purpose and Creative Passion
Decorated with cages, rafts, and migration pod motifs, just beyond tells a focused story about Thomasos’ career legacy, conceptual aims, and political contributions to society. Descriptive wall texts, process pieces, and sketchbook materials reinforce explorations of colonialism, incarceration, and institutional system design. While echoing words like structural racism, Bali bombs, and imprisonment, the exhibit mirrors the themes of Thomasos’ diverse cultural background from her opening biography. Works like Rally (1994), display parallel brush strokes of pink, green, blue, and crimson acrylic, symbolic of the vibrant communities that she’s from. This alluding evidence demonstrates the influences of the artist’s ethnic minority background on her conceptual creative aims. Text and audio further impose an opinion for the public viewer: confident lines, challenging narratives, remarkable career, reads the bio, before a politically titled painting, Dos Amigos (Slave Boat, 1993), begins to open the exhibit. Paintings like Raft (2011) visually enforce themes of confinement and capitalism, with a lifeless grey palette of buildings units suffocated in a cityscape down a factory line. The show stopping 11 by 20-foot Arc (2009), Thomasos’ largest to date, is the perfect grand finale for this linear story, as a collage of iconic abstract skulls, rafts, and human cages converge. This summarizes her artistic career through iconic opaque brush work, architectural line drawings, and bodies of colour that create an unbreathable painting about claustrophobic and systematic forces.
Left: Dos Amigos (Slave Boat, 1993), Right: Raft (2011)
Hence, just beyond is technical curation of Thomas’s art rather than an art exhibit, one meant for the masses that takes a position of education, clarity, and guided perspectives to help unendowed audiences understand Thomasos legacy. Avoird’s curation and Jacques cross-cultural exhibit experiences are revealed through the structured, systematic, and macro creative direction taken to appeal to a public audience. Diverse works showcase her roles as a student, artist, abstract painter, to be remembered by. Glass displays speak to friends and family through paint containers, shoes, and film photographs, all while supplementary statements and media files provide literal context for new gallery visitors. Finally, the dried-out marker scribbles, quickly annotated quotes, and overcharged colour application in private process works like Kingdom Come Untitled, (2011) make a public appearance to highlight her career millstones, such as her 2011 Kingdom Come Oakville Gallery on-site, where Frater now serves as an Executive Director.
Left: Untitled, (2011), Right: Sketchbook Journal
These assistive aids curate a clear narrative for the mass public to avoid confusion. People must not leave the exhibit without knowing what Denyse did. Seen in the previous AGO Andy Warhol (2021) exhibit- a mix of classic, critical, large-scale work and artist objects were also use to appeal to modern audiences. However, these objective curations also kill the emotional sentiment that the perspectives of an embodied critic can bring. Through a micro analysis, I see just beyond as a story about a woman’s passions, peace, and bonds with paint. As a fellow painter, the use of converging lines, repetition, and negative space in Virtual Incarceration (1999) gives additional insight to an artist’s skills and labour. In the same Grid Room where Rally (1994) speaks to devasted political poverty, also sits a consciously unprimed Virtual Incarcerations (1999) canvas and metallic pigments for Recollect (1994). Under the gallery light, the white stamped Recollect cross-hatches glisten– it is both a political rebuild of community, as much as it is a personal aim to instill a glimmer of hope for an emotionally effected creator.
Left: Virtual Incarceration (1999), Right: Recollect (1994)
These passions are further captured in Artist in Residence paintings like Open Range Wyoming (2000), an unassuming space with uncontrolled brush strokes, organic forms, and slightly watered-down acrylics that oversoak thin, wrinkled paper. They express Thomasos’ creative flow
and I see an artist that is unafraid, deeply curious, and emotionally connected with her paint. In Kingdom Come the bold colours, confident strokes, and firm drawings reveal how Thomasos used her art as an escape. Through painting she could bring complex, challenging visions to life through the comfort of her medium.
Left: Open Range Wyoming (2000), Right: Untitled (Kingdom Come, 2011)
Appealing to the Masses, Mistakes Are Made
The gallery’s intent to curate an accessible exhibit through a focused paintings, contextual media, and reinforced messaging successfully derived meanings for this exhibit to give it purpose. There’s an irony in how the public views art in a gallery space; there’s those who think they don’t know how to understand, then those searching for something to understand. Directing an objective conceptual focus, like a story of Thomasos’ cultural experiences on her explorations of confinement and immigration, is a more logical theme than discussing polarizing abstract aesthetics.
Yet, these overtly critical theory narratives still left unanswered questions about the symbolism of the frequent cage motif, the roots of Thomasos’ interests of incarceration, and the relation of art in response to personal isolation. Objectivity can still create emotional confusion, as in the Figure Room, where Denyse’s meta “5 foot by something” self-portrait stares at a hanged horse above of classic Cezanne skulls. While words Sacrifice (1989) taint the walls, these physical parallels mistakenly create a repulsive illusion of a figure facing death, when its objective was to capture Thomasos’ early student life.
Left: Untitled (Self Portrait, 1984-1985), Right: Sacrifice (1989)
Art Expert or Not, We’re All Emotional
Alas, the institution’s objective curation planted easter eggs that were easy to find, clear enough to understand, but challenging to relate to. In contrast, I left my cold read of the exhibit rather inspired, when I focused on how it made me feel, rather than what it meant. People who ‘don’t understand art’ do have an appetite for aesthetic appreciation and emotional vulnerability. I saw opportunities among the supporting texts, videos, and selection of artworks to tell a different story simply about a woman’s passions that could appeal to just as wide an audience, if not grander. I present 3 agreeing sources from all walks of life: a joyous old man, a small child, and a young woman, through overhead conversions below.
The Joyous Man: (On the phone)
“I’m at the Denyse Thomasos Exhibit right now. I’ve never heard of her before but she’s a Trinidadian Canadian artist that does abstract art. She’s amazing- she uses colour and paint to create these giant works!
The Small Child: (To her father)
“I see Colour! ... And Big Lines! I see... Big Beautiful Paintings!”
The Young Woman: (To a friend)
“Oh! She went to UTM too!”
Alas, we see that while critical theories and deeply political symbolism can direct an audience, humanized perspectives are what leaves people inspired. The joyous man was taken away by the excitement it made him feel, the child in her ability to understand what she saw, and the young woman by finding commonality through shared community.
Exhibits: Be Human and Make Friends
Denyse Thomasos: just beyond, thoroughly captured the abstractly compelling, visual illusion of Thomasos’ cage-filled paintings, not-to-be-forgotten career milestones, and critical incarceration themes- many avenues for the audience to take away. However, while these objective critical theories can relate directly to certain political communities, emotions, passions, and feelings are what is universally shared. What does it mean to present art about a human, like a human, to humanize an exhibit? For it is when these institutions become vulnerable and subjective do we begin to capture the spirit of the artist.
Just beyond left me creatively inspired and self-reflective of my personal legacy as I thought about how the AGO painted Thomasos’ legacy. As I contemplated the writings of Richard Hill honouring his friend James Luna, Bridget Moser on how Lisa Smolkin’s works became her therapy, and Jennifer Doyle hitting her critic limits, I hit my own existential crises of how do I want to be remembered? If my work and existence is motivated by how it makes people feel, I’d only selfishly wish [acknowledging my subjective bias] that this exhibit would’ve also highlighted more of thepassionate, energizing spirit that Thomasos’ art also made people feel.
Works Cited
“Announcing Our New Executive Director, Sally Frater!” Oakville Galleries, https://www.oakvillegalleries.com/events/details/45/Announcing-our-new- Executive-Director-Sally-Frater.
“Denyse Thomasos Artist Bio.” Toronto Biennial of Art, https://torontobiennial.org/artist- contributor/denyse-thomasos/.
“Denyse Thomasos.” Olga Korper Gallery, https://www.olgakorpergallery.com/artists/denyse-thomasos/.
“Denyse Thomasos: Just Beyond.” Art Gallery of Ontario, https://ago.ca/exhibitions/denyse-thomasos-just-beyond.
Price, Neil. “Toronto Painter Denyse Thomasos' Posthumous Ago Exhibit 'Just beyond' Pays Homage to a Towering Talent.” Thestar.com, Toronto Star, 11 Oct. 2022, https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/visualarts/2022/10/11/toronto-painter- denyse-thomasos-posthumous-ago-exhibit-just-beyond-pays-homage-to-a- towering-talent.html.
“Remai Modern Names Head of Exhibitions & Collections/Chief Curator.” Remai Modern, 22 Dec. 2020, https://remaimodern.org/news-community/news- community-all/remai-modern-names-head-of-exhibitions-collectionschief-curator/.
“Renée Van Der Avoird.” Art Gallery of Ontario, https://ago.ca/people/renee-van-der- avoird.