Courtesy of the artist
Thomas Stavovy, (Untitled), charcoal on paper, 2009
Thomas Stavovy
The lies are a problem. I mean, in this case, the nature of the images which accompany these brief commentaries. Distortions of scale and color and detail are not new in this age of digital reproduction, to adapt the title of a defining 1936 essay by the critic Walter Benjamin. But Benjamin was less interested in the duplication of works in another medium (a photograph of a painting, for example) than he was in art that was itself only reproducible, and never unique (as in a film).
My dismay is less profound, and usually bearable. The illustrations accompanying this piece are not the works that they illustrate. They are an illusory convenience that can serve as no more than invitations to go in search of the works themselves. But in the case of Thomas Stavovy’s art, the failure of the image on the web page is particularly painful and complete. Here are falsehoods of not only dimension, but also of surface textures that are as subtle as molded shadow and are here effectively erased.
Courtesy of the artist
Thomas Stavovy, “Saraband,” soft ground etching, 2010
Although my own preference is generally for content over form, I have been consistently amazed by the lessons in looking that Stavovy’s work teaches. There are pieces where the gradations of color on a single sheet of paper have a suggestion of the neverending, the impermanence of the media a matter of complete irrelevance to the effect.
On the wall of one of the studio spaces in which Stavovy works, a large-scale figurative drawing hung above a sculpture of charcoal dust, a history of the artist’s moving hand that marked the seam of wall and floor, with far more of blessing to it than Richard Serra’s hot lead thrown into a corner. I tried to take a photograph of it. There was no point.
Contact the artist at tstavovy@msn.com. Additional images are here