Thornton Dial: Viewpoint of the Foundry Man

Thornton Dial’s “Viewpoint of the Foundry Man” is on exhibit at Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York. The exhibition has been extended through January 12, 2013.  Thornton Dial is a self-taught artist who uses found objects to construct art pieces and paintings about history and experiences. His notoriety heightened in the late 1980s and he has shown in many museums in the United States in the past two decades.

An excerpt from the review in The Gallerist NY:

“It’s a potent, cleansing tonic after the self-consciously refined contemporary art that dominates Chelsea. His new works are dense assemblages of paint and found objects, typically bent or battered on panels. They are intended to be autobiographical, recalling his life as a laborer in Emelle, Ala.”

Read the entire review from The Gallerist NY here.

The Foundation for Self Taught Artists says:

One of the most widely exhibited and collected contemporary artists associated with American self taught and vernacular art, Thornton Dial has lived much of his life in and around Bessemer, Alabama. He worked as a manual laborer in a variety of positions—as carpenter, bricklayer, house painter, and concrete worker––but spent thirty years as a railroad welder for Pullman Standard, an experience which informed his later large-scale steel sculpture. Dial has always made what he calls “things,” but only upon his retirement in the late 1980s did he begin to concentrate exclusively on his art.

Dial’s work is marked by a diversity in media and the artist’s interaction with social and political concerns. His works fall into three categories: works on paper, sculptures, and mixed media constructions. His drawings often deal with allegorical female figures or current events, while his sculptures and constructions more overtly consider American race relations and the African American experience through the 20th and 21st centuries. Through the efforts of collector and curator William Arnett, Dial’s powerful multimedia work has garnered critical acclaim and has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the American Folk Art Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Visit Andrew Edin Gallery in New York to experience Thornton Dial.

The next exhibit will be John Byam followed by the Outside Art Fair the first weekend of February 2013.

Sources: Andrew Edin Gallery, Foundation For Self Taught Artists