Nick Thomm, an Australian artist who debuts his solo exhibition in downtown New York tonight, has a vision that is shockingly, vividly, in the here and now. Created in both New York and Melbourne, Thomm's latest show, Tropic Glows, is a neon-saturated, sexy mash-up of photography and 3-D modeling—pitting the familiar with the unknown.
Thomm is, as ACCLAIM magazine once described, "the poster child for the digitally inclined" and a savant with mixed media, informed by his background as a film director and designer. Before his opening at Castle Fitzjohns, the multidisciplinary artist was gracious enough to share preview images with Opening Ceremony, and explain why fashion and music are bigger inspirations to him than art.
JAMES DEREK SAPIENZA: What does your creative process look like?
NICK THOMM: I spend a lot of time working naturally. I’ll let ideas flow, and I won’t sit for too long before I start creating something. I’ll create 20 works or something, and then I’ll end up combining those pieces into a finished piece. There’s a lot of stuff that is thrown out in the process. I tend to work really quickly, and then spend a lot of time refining and getting the works up to scale.
So what inspires you?
I suppose fashion and music are bigger inspirations to me than art. I spend a lot of time working as a designer, so my art becomes stylistically driven, even if I'm changing mediums. And I think that comes from music and fashion inspiration; I look at it in the same way that you would create a fashion collection, or you would create an album as a musician.
I’ve noticed that Tropic Glows has a cohesiveness to it, almost like a brand.
Well, it goes back to the idea of working within the inspiration from fashion and music. I look at it as a collection, and I like to look at [the opening] as the release of it. I think that branding the show and the work is important to how it all comes across. It’s a part of what I’m creating, but it’s also part of the digital age. Everything now is so branded and packaged, and I think that to communicate the art in the right way, I needed to do the same thing—to send it back to people and say, "Hey, this is essentially the same thing as an album or a fashion collection, but it’s art."
Your work blends classical Greek art with modernism and digital culture. How do make these elements relate and work with each other?
I love really iconic imagery, things people have some sort of understanding of before they see it, and I love having the opportunity to be able to change that. You have a starting point with the viewer, and they see the work, and they may feel something about it already, but you’re taking control and changing that vision, and presenting them with something new. It’s recontextualizing things that have existed before, to make sense now.
What are the differences between working in New York and Melbourne?
The first thing I found when I came over here is that it’s a lot more intense. You don’t get that break—when you finish working for the day and you go out, it's still intense. I’ve found that it’s quite a bit more stressful working here, but at the same time, it’s a lot more inspiring.
Like for this show, I spent quite a bit of time in Australia working on the body of work, which is really good cause
Thomm is, as ACCLAIM magazine once described, "the poster child for the digitally inclined" and a savant with mixed media, informed by his background as a film director and designer. Before his opening at Castle Fitzjohns, the multidisciplinary artist was gracious enough to share preview images with Opening Ceremony, and explain why fashion and music are bigger inspirations to him than art.
JAMES DEREK SAPIENZA: What does your creative process look like?
NICK THOMM: I spend a lot of time working naturally. I’ll let ideas flow, and I won’t sit for too long before I start creating something. I’ll create 20 works or something, and then I’ll end up combining those pieces into a finished piece. There’s a lot of stuff that is thrown out in the process. I tend to work really quickly, and then spend a lot of time refining and getting the works up to scale.
So what inspires you?
I suppose fashion and music are bigger inspirations to me than art. I spend a lot of time working as a designer, so my art becomes stylistically driven, even if I'm changing mediums. And I think that comes from music and fashion inspiration; I look at it in the same way that you would create a fashion collection, or you would create an album as a musician.
I’ve noticed that Tropic Glows has a cohesiveness to it, almost like a brand.
Well, it goes back to the idea of working within the inspiration from fashion and music. I look at it as a collection, and I like to look at [the opening] as the release of it. I think that branding the show and the work is important to how it all comes across. It’s a part of what I’m creating, but it’s also part of the digital age. Everything now is so branded and packaged, and I think that to communicate the art in the right way, I needed to do the same thing—to send it back to people and say, "Hey, this is essentially the same thing as an album or a fashion collection, but it’s art."
Your work blends classical Greek art with modernism and digital culture. How do make these elements relate and work with each other?
I love really iconic imagery, things people have some sort of understanding of before they see it, and I love having the opportunity to be able to change that. You have a starting point with the viewer, and they see the work, and they may feel something about it already, but you’re taking control and changing that vision, and presenting them with something new. It’s recontextualizing things that have existed before, to make sense now.
What are the differences between working in New York and Melbourne?
The first thing I found when I came over here is that it’s a lot more intense. You don’t get that break—when you finish working for the day and you go out, it's still intense. I’ve found that it’s quite a bit more stressful working here, but at the same time, it’s a lot more inspiring.
Like for this show, I spent quite a bit of time in Australia working on the body of work, which is really good cause