October 15 – November 20, 2016
“… the paintings do aim to create a new image in the world where one might feel at least in some manner that they are navigating something for the first time.”
– Thomas Berding, July 2016
Thomas Berding, b. 1962, Cincinnati, OH, lives and works in East Lansing. The most challenging aspect of contemporary abstract painting is to make something that we never anticipated seeing before. Thomas Berding’s uniquely distinct paintings overcome this challenge with brio and inventiveness. The lightness of being in his work, the range of forms, contours, edges, saturations and coloring – and the lightness of the spaces in between his network of slashes, swatches, and other painterly exchanges, is so navigable for the eye that the paintings are airy, permeable, and most significantly, written in a language that is all his own. And he has developed a taxonomic sensitivity to what constitutes expedient form and significance. The Berding Memorandum – the ideology and meaning in his work – is made sentient in the gravitas of his paintings.
Curated by Dick Goody. Full-color catalogue available.
