Join us at Concordia for two events with artist Cheyney Thompson, represented by Andrew Kreps Gallery and Lisson Gallery in New York City. On Tuesday September 23, Thompson will deliver a public lecture titled “Decomposition and the Nevermade,” addressing his art practice through its relation to the work of Théodore Géricault. On Wednesday September 24, Thompson will join us at the Centre for Expanded Poetics for a discussion of the relationship between romanticism and post-conceptual painting. Focusing on Thompson’s engagement with Rubens and Cezanne in his 2022 exhibition, “Several Bellonas,” CEP director Nathan Brown will reframe this project by situating Eugène Delacroix’s color theory as, on the one hand, influenced by his studies of Rubens’s Medici Cycle, and, on the other hand, an important precursor to Thompson’s reconstructions of the ground of image production in painting and drawing. A conversation with the artist and Q&A will follow.
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At the core of Cheyney Thompson’s practice is an analytical approach and commitment to the examination of painting—its production, distribution and presentation in contemporary conditions. He often applies strict sets of principles to the creation of his work, using rules-based systems as generative tools to minimise the subjectivity of creative decisions. The methods for investigation have included such varied structures as mathematical theories, complex algorithms, economic formulas or numerical colour systems. The result is a dialogue between the formal qualities of the work and the consciousness of its production.
Thompson’s work has come to be understood as an important intervention in the history of painting, positioned as a key exemplar of what David Joselit calls “painting beside itself.” His work is held in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. His practice is the subject of a monograph by Christian Schaernack, published by MIT Press.