Thomas Scheibitz : studio imaginaire

Thomas Scheibitz. Studio Imaginaire, presents new painting, relief and sculpture by the artist that invite exploration of the studio as a space between workshop and utopia. Pushing beyond the studio practices of predecessors ranging from Courbet to Mondrian and Bacon, Scheibitz utilizes the formal elements of painting to investigate iconographic questions and the rhetoric of the signifier and the signified.
The title Studio Imaginaire, references Andre Malraux and the Musée Imaginaire, an idea that Scheibitz identifies with in his own practice of collecting and referencing an ever-expanding archive. In the Musée Imaginaire, Malraux sought to amass two-dimensional graphic representations of art from all cultures and time periods, which could be curated, juxtaposed, and reconfigured with limitless facility. Thomas Scheibitz’s new works skillfully bring together selections culled from the artist’s vast collection of found imagery, in a continuation of the artist’s hallmark practice developed over nearly two decades. From fashion photography to Renaissance-era maps, Scheibitz gathers visual information that interests him and then uses it as source material. Through layering, refining and expanding upon these images taken from the common lexicon of contemporary experience, Scheibitz synthesizes the various forms into compositions that superbly distill the amalgamation of relationships in the final tableau. In a similar sense, Scheibitz riffs on Malraux’s Musée Imaginaire with the desire to examine the studio itself as a crucial space in which ideas, images and styles can freely coalesce.