About
Blair Thurman’s influences range from Pop art and Minimalism to relics from childhood, popular music, and 1970s cinema. His standardized forms, pulled from slot-car racetracks, architectural frameworks, and found shapes from daily life, comprise a personal iconography—the fascinations of boyhood working to render the subliminal realm of abstract geometries more idiosyncratic and accessible. Thurman refers to the style and significance of his work as its “signature-content” as he investigates the intersection between our cultural environment and our imagined fantasies, examining the memory and poetry embedded in the very act of looking.
Blair Thurman was born in 1961 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He received his B.F.A. from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Canada, and his M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Thurman’s work has been exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions. Recent solo museum exhibitions include Le Magasin—Centre National d’Art Contemporain, France (2014); and “Honeybadgers,” Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma (2015). Thurman’s work is featured in several permanent collections, including the Centre national des arts plastique, Paris; Le Consortium, Dijon; Fonds régional d’art contemporain, France; and the Syz Collection, Switzerland. Thurman’s work was included in the 46th Biennale di Venezia in 1995.
Thurman currently lives and works in New York.
#BlairThurman
Exhibitions
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Installation
Blair Thurman
April 17–May 17, 2018
Garage Italia Milano
www.garageitaliamilano.it
Blair Thurman: Nell’Acqua Azzurra, presented by Gagosian and Garage Italia, showcases new work by Thurman in the iconic former petrol station Agip Supercortemaggiore in Milan. Featuring standardized forms pulled from slot-car racetracks, architectural frameworks, and found shapes from daily life, Thurman’s work transposes the formal details of everyday objects into the subliminal realm of abstraction. This unique collaboration continues the long tradition of exchange between fine art and the automobile industry that began with the Italian Futurist movement.
Blair Thurman, Spectre, 2018 © Blair Thurman
Art Fair
Zona Maco 2018
February 7–11, 2018, booth F201
Centro Citibanamex, Mexico City
www.zsonamaco.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in Zona Maco México Arte Contemporáneo 2018, presenting works by Chris Burden, John Chamberlain, Dan Colen, Frank Gehry, Piero Golia, Douglas Gordon, Katharina Grosse, Adam McEwen, Takashi Murakami, Albert Oehlen, Giuseppe Penone, Pablo Picasso, Richard Prince, Sterling Ruby, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Saville, Rudolf Stingel, Robert Therrien, Blair Thurman, Adriana Varejão, Jeff Wall, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann. If you wish to receive a PDF with detailed information on the works, please contact us at losangeles@gagosian.com. Tickets are available at www.zsonamaco.com.
John Chamberlain, Untitled, 1993 © 2018 Fairweather & Fairweather LTD/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Art Fair
artgenève 2018
February 1–4, 2018, booth B19
Palexpo, Geneva
www.artgeneve.ch
Gagosian is pleased to participate in artgenève 2018, presenting a selection of works by Richard Artschwager, Georg Baselitz, John Currin, Dadamaino, Edmund de Waal, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Peter Lindbergh, Vera Lutter, Man Ray, Sally Mann, Brice Marden, Olivier Mosset, Albert Oehlen, Steven Parrino, Giuseppe Penone, Sigmar Polke, Ed Ruscha, Blair Thurman, Tatiana Trouvé, Tom Wesselmann, Franz West, Rachel Whiteread, and others.
If you wish to receive a PDF with detailed information on the works, please contact us at geneva@gagosian.com. Tickets are available at www.artgeneve.ch.
Giuseppe Penone, Pelle di foglie—5 foglie a terra, 2011 © Giuseppe Penone
Museum Exhibitions
Closed
Blair Thurman
Spook Rock Road (Kasino-Kut)
November 19, 2022–March 19, 2023
Frac Normandie Caen, France
www.fracnormandiecaen.fr
Spook Rock Road (Kasino-Kut) presents large-scale pictorial installations that serve as a framework for a set of new sculptures and recent paintings by Blair Thurman. The three-dimensional works—made from dismantled go-karts topped with umbrellas—specifically evoke junk sculpture, while the large installations made of monochrome panels transpose the art of “assemblage” into painting. The allusion to the “casino” in the exhibition title hints at Thurman’s method, which always leaves a part of the work to chance.
Installation view, Blair Thurman: Spook Rock Road (Kasino-Kut), Frac Normandie Caen, France, November 19, 2022–March 19, 2023. Artwork © Blair Thurman
Closed
Hippydrome
April 30–September 4, 2022
Frac Normandie Caen, France
www.fracnormandiecaen.fr
This exhibition brings together a selection of “interior landscapes” and portraits of the world in miniature that share an eccentric or fantastic sensibility, loosely linking them to Surrealism. Work by Jim Shaw and Blair Thurman is included.
Jim Shaw, Anatomy Weird-ohs (Can opener; Blake-St. Sebastian Crystal & Fish Face), 2011, Frac Normandie Caen, France © Jim Shaw. Photo: Clérin-Morin Photographie
Closed
All of the Above
2011–2020
September 24–December 27, 2020
Kanal–Centre Pompidou, Brussels
kanal.brussels
Curated by artist John Armleder, All of the Above was inspired by his memories of feeling that he was being observed in return by the cultural artifacts he saw when he visited museums and temples as a child. This exhibition seeks to reproduce that experience by presenting a constellation of works by more than forty artists on a large multilevel platform to form a landscape that visitors can explore from a distance. Work by Chris Burden, Olivier Mosset, and Blair Thurman is included.
Closed
None of the Above
2004–2020
September 24–November 15, 2020
Kanal–Centre Pompidou, Brussels
www.kanal.brussels
For None of the Above, John Armleder invited artists to present a work of art that is either no bigger than a postage stamp or immaterial. Originally presented at the Swiss Institute in New York in 2004, this new staging of the exhibition forces visitors to search for the artworks in the form of a conceptual treasure hunt conceived by Armleder. Work by Piero Golia, Olivier Mosset, and Blair Thurman is included.