After eight years in Chelsea, the gallery has relocated to the LES. We have taken a newly renovated storefront on Allen Street, just a little south of Delancey on the west side of the block. We are opening the gallery with our fourth solo exhibition of artist Thomas Allen.
Playing the role of scientist, Allen enlists mid 20th-century books on the natural phenomenon of science(astronomy, physics, electricity, biology) and presents his research as if through the eyes of his 8-year old daughter. How would she understand and portray these theories and absolutes of science?
Allen’s signature use of cutting and repurposing book illustrations has not vanished. Instead of the pulp fiction genre, Allen plays with 50’s era versions of clean cut youths and domesticated moms. His unmistakable talent for creating the illusion of 3D in photography with his deft cuts and crimps, establishes a magical world in which a boy and girl play tag creating their own kind of electricity, a milkman makes a very special delivery in space, young toughs play marbles with the solar system and a mother busily sews her own version of “string theory.”
Thomas Allen was born in Highland Park, MI in 1963. After changing his major to art in 1986, Tom spent the second half of his 10 year college career going to school part-time while working full-time for Toys 'R' Us to support himself. He received his BFA in 1991 and went on to earn his MFA form the University of Minnesota in 1996. Tom's exhibition record lists galleries throughout the United States and reflects two solo museum exhibitions at the Grand Rapids Art Museum in Michigan and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Milwaukee Art Museum; Nelson-Atkins Museum Target Corporation; Fidelity Investments and The Progressive Corporation. Publication credits include Harper's, The New Yorker, New York Magazine and O Magazine among many others. In 2007, Aperture Foundation [NY] published UNCOVERED: Photographs by Thomas Allen with a forward by graphic design superstar Chip Kidd.
The exhibition will remain on view thru October 14, 2012. Foley is open Wednesday – Sunday 12PM – 6PM. For more information or to request images, please contact the gallery at 212.244.9081 or via email at info@foleygallery.com.