Philippe Thomas
«Lost property»
Frieze, London, May 2001, p.86 & 87
It wasn't so much the paintings themselves as the way their deep perspectives
arid vistas suggested passageways opening onto fantasy worlds - dream-like environments
cutting through the cream-coloured walls - as the camera, catching sight of
them in a hallway would linger for a moment while the disjointed elements of
the plot unravelled. At other times the panning of the camera as it followed
the actors appeared to flatten the paintings, forcing them back into their original
role as set details. Something similar to this kind of visual double entendre
occurs in many of Philippe Thomas works. In Jedermann NA. Proprité
Privée (Jedermann NA. Private Property, 1990), for example, a parquet
floor that seems to have been removed from its original site becomes a sculpture,
its tacky oak floorboards strangely evoking the work of Carl Andre. A series
of photographs depicting beautiful semi-abstract surfaces reveal themselves
to be a series of blown-up details from a much larger group portrait photo,
Fictionalisme: Une pièce à conviction (Fictionalism:
An Item of Evidence, 1985-86), which in turn refers to a well-known 19th-century
pointing: Fantin-Latour's Homage à Delacroix (1864).
The manifold meanings and changeable identities assumed by these objects and
pictures can be traced back to a show at the Cable Gallery in New York in 1987,
when Thomas began a project entitled “Les readymade appartiennent à
tout le monde” (Readymades Belong to Everyone). Its purpose, in a nutshell,
consisted of selling artworks (mainly multiples) whose authorship was transferred
to the purchaser along with the work itself. The process was complex and meant
that Thomas' name disappeared from “his” artworks in circulation,
which created problems when works were resold or bought by museums instead of
individuals. A number of texts were published under similar conditions - confusing
the issue still further. Thomas at times resorted to pseudonyms that gradually
acquired the status of heteronyms, in a manner reminiscent of the Portuguese
Modernist writer Fernando Pessoa, one of Thomas' enduring references.
This generalized regime of merging fiction into reality and back again inevitably
affects how the work is experienced. Viewing a number of Thomas' pieces brought
together for an exhibition can turn you into a sleepwalking Tom Cruise-type
character, as you lurk around the exhibits purposefully but without a clue as
to what is really going on. Checking the wall captions reveals little more than
confusing information, gradually blurring the identity of the artist, who is
hidden behind a collection of pseudonyms and other people's names that of course
are indistinguishable to the viewer. But there's something to gain from this
theoretical and - since the artists' death six years ago physical disappearance,
and that is that his work is probably perceived differently today than at the
time of its original manufacture. In retrospect, the principle of “Readymades
Belong to Everyone”, along with its catchy title, seems like an archetypal
1980s venture in its promise of dry efficiency and limitless glamour (emphasized
in the project's advertising) and the clean-cut aesthetic of the actual objects
(such as the best-selling oil paintings of enlarged barcodes). The process flattered
the narcissism of collectors such as those who posed for the group portrait
Fictionalisme as much as it disconcerted museum curators.
Today, however, after the art market has been through the heights of the 1980s
and the depression of the 1990s, and site-specific installations have transformed
many museums into alternative spaces and vice versa, the context of Thomas'
work has changed. One particular result of this is that his formal vocabulary
has become more noticeable. While it retains a sense of contemporaneity, it
also appears to be full of visual puns. Artists from younger generations, such
as Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe, have certainly learned a lot from the
conceptual, post-Warholian project of Thomas, although most have missed the
elusive and poetic dimensions of his visual work. One of the most fascinating
qualities of his images and objects stems from their quietness (to the point
of silence), which is suddenly broken at unexpected moments. These bland photographs
and office furniture-like fragments have an odd beauty, reminiscent of props
waiting for a play to start, or for the camera to roll.
One of Thomas' earliest pieces, Sujet à discretion (Subject
Matter at Your Discretion, 1985), a photographic triptych comprising three views
of the Mediterranean under a pale blue sky, typifies this quality. The work
has three authors: the first panel is credited as “anonymous”; the
second is signed by Thomas: and the third by the purchaser. While the first
part bears a purely descriptive subtitle, Vue de la mer en Méditerranée
(View of the Mediterranean), the second and third share the strange inscription
Autoportrait, vue de l'esprit (Self-Portrait from a Theoretical
Viewpoint), which refers at once to a Romantic pondering on the meditative power
of the image and to the theoretical implications of its multiplication. Ultimately,
the work's repeated horizon line, which runs across three panels, is hypnotizing.
The line creates a perfect, precise image yet seems to be shifting, as if endeavouring
to escape finality.
Sophie Berrebi