Mâverâ collection Thom Shaw catalogue 150dpi by M.A.D. GALLERY MILANO

Project Daniele Imbimbo and Luca Pizzocheri Texts Daniele Imbimbo and Luca Pizzocheri, with an essay by Ilaria Innocenti

The editors would like to thank Silvia Fucigna and Esmer Erdem for their valuable support and the precious advices they provided during all the preparatory stages of this catalogue.

Graphics Daniele Imbimbo and Luca Pizzocheri Photography Can Sarıçoban

Mâverâ Collection Founders • Daniele Imbimbo | Luca Pizzocheri Press Relations (Turkey) • Sıla Türkpençesi Artistic Advisor • Marco Veronese

Daniele Imbimbo - Luca Pizzocheri

CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW

Table of Content

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Biographic note...................................................................................................... 6 The Art of Thom Shaw..........................................................................................12 The Body Count.................................................................................................24 Armageddon..................................................................................................... 26 Untitled Self Portrait.........................................................................................28 The Malcom X Paradox: Poverty's Paradise #10..............................................30 Untitled N°1.......................................................................................................32 Self-Portrait: Abyss........................................................................................... 34 Backstreet Eulogy.............................................................................................36 Untitled N°2.......................................................................................................38

Hegemony: Hidden Fury...................................................................................40 Untitled N째3.......................................................................................................42 Self Portrait: Redemptive Mask....................................................................... 44 Untitled N째4.......................................................................................................46 Untitled N째5.......................................................................................................48 Personal Exhibitions.............................................................................................52 Collective Exhibitions...........................................................................................54 Awards.................................................................................................................. 56 Museums hosting works of Thom Shaw .............................................................57 M창vera Collection.................................................................................................60

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CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW

Biographic note Thomas Eugene Shaw Jr. was born at South Campbellsville, Ohio on August 28th, 1947. His father, Thomas Eugene Shaw Senior, was a share-cropper from Georgia and his mother, Alberta Ellis, was a gospel singer and musician. Thom was their first son, later followed by six sisters and three brothers. Between 1961 and 1964 Thom Shaw attended the Heinold Junior High School in Cincinnati, from where he moved to Hughes High School, where he graduated. From 1966 to 1970 he attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati, with majors in painting and print-making, eventually obtaining the title of Bachelor of Fine Arts. In order to support his studies, he also worked in the morgue of a local hospital. Having realized Thom Shaws’s talents, the hospital commissioned him the production of special March of Dimes posters. This became the occasion for Thom to meet his future wife Jacqueline Dent who, having fallen in love with Thom’s posters, couldn’t refrain from stealing a few of them from the hospital’s walls. Thom Shaw later married Jacqueline who gave him three sons and one daughter. At the time of his marriage, Thom had already a natural son, born from a previous relationship. During the late 1960s Thom Shaw started his professional career for the Cincinnati Bell, an important communication company in Ohio, where he eventually worked for thirty years as the lead graphic designer. While working, he kept on taking lessons, and in 1973 he obtained a Master of Arts from the

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Cranbrook Academy of Fine Arts (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan). During the 1970s, Thom Shaw, together with the photographer Melvin Grier and the painters Gilbert and Joyce Young, were part of a Black Art collective called Mixed Media. Thom Shaw’s artistic career really began in 1973, when the recently founded Miller Gallery in downtown Cincinnati gave him the chance for his first-ever solo show. In the early 1980s Thom started having steady solo exhibitions throughout the United States. He was, for example, the first black artist to show in the Cincinnati Art Museum. The exhibition at the prestigious Studio Museum in Harlem in 1994 was Thom Shaw’s big break, since The New York Times pointed to him as a standout among the group. This event finally convinced Thom about his own chances as a professional artist, and the following year he retired from his job at the Cincinnati Bell. Shaw was a founding member of the group Umoja, whose artists mentored all African American freshmen at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, as well as seeking exhibition opportunities for mature Black artists in local galleries and institutions. Soon after devoting himself completely to his own artistic production, Thom Shaw had to face and battle with a series of illnesses, exacerbated by diabetes, the first of which was a quintuple by-pass operation in 1997. In 2005 Thom Shaw fell seriously ill shortly after being named the Taft Museum of Art’s Duncanson Artist-in-Residence. During the autumn he slipped into a

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CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW

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coma caused by a severe neck infection brought on by kidney failure. he was then transferred to East Galbraith Nursing Home, where the doctors thought he would live out his days in hospice care. The closeness to death experience led him to work on a series of self-portraits in which he tackles the intractable and deeply personal issue of spirituality. The ensuing series are as much about his spirituality as they are about his medical story. In May 2008 an infection led to the amputation of his right leg. And yet, less than two months later, Shaw fastened on a prosthesis and headed back to the studio. Thom Eugene Shaw died in Cincinnati on July 6th, 2010.

CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW

The Art of Thom Shaw

Thom Shaw’s whole artistic poetry, a mirror of his life story, immediately leads the viewer's mind to some paintings by German expressionists as Heckel or Kirchner. We can track those same themes of social protest and simultaneous search of the subjective, further enhanced by the technical decision to avoid shades, quite deliberately creating very accentuated juxtaposition of contrasting colours. At the end, these contrasts correspond to conflicting emotional states, which are able to surprise, sometimes even upset, certainly shake up, impress and involve the viewer. Thom Shaw’s works show without filters the worst sides of a society in which the artist lived and of which he had direct experience: the social consequences of racial segregation, the struggle for equal rights and its contradictions, the political unrest; as well as the most worn out sides of himself, his existential angst and self-analysis are also linked to the desire - or perhaps fear? - of social redemption. By following his artistic career, we find all these contents unravelling over time from social issues to identity issues involving the body. In both cases, it is easy to argue that these were self-portraits investigating the artist’s own plight relationship with the outside world. This passes through, or perhaps begins with, his own condition of ethnic marginality, meaning the difficulty to integrate into a society, the society of white people as opposed to that of black

people. In the artist's works, this society appears to be extremely uninhabitable and threatening. Even the physical body, similarly to the social environment that surrounds it, seems to be a strange, unwelcoming environment, when not downright hostile and uncontrollable. In all his works, experiences of struggle and alienation seem to emerge, referring to either the physical body either the social body. At the same time , there are traces of the need to free oneself from a social and cultural destiny which, for him, had already been written, looking for a new seed of self among many contradictions. The preferred artistic techniques, particularly the engraving, creates scratches and slits, - which are similar to wounds and gashes - giving a sense of cold hardness, accentuating the separation of elements. So even the chosen colours, black and white, rather than being merged, nuanced or integrated are merely juxtaposed, as if to underline once again the effect of a contrast, a separation between black and white, as between white people and black people. Black is the prevalent colour. As if white, a simple empty space in between, were struggling to make room for itself. Black as the colour of melancholy, such as the sense of falling into an abyss. White, perhaps, even as the need to find an alternative to deep black. Going even further in the interpretation, the “black” spreading and taking more space in a white society is almost an act of furious self-affirmation. We think of the artist's life: raised in a society where black communities live in a condition of marginalization, he had the chance to study, to achieve a "white" condition, thus overcoming the family social status and acting as the model of the black people’s “chance to

CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW

succeed”, to change their position in society.

The strokes, because of the limited ductility of the materials of choice does not change or become soft and cosy: it is instead clear, defined, sharp, making the works similar to prints. This formal choice, which certainly refers to Thom Shaw’s professional experience as a graphic artist, would suggest a need to detach himself from the experiences conveyed in the artwork, from the black in its various facets of meaning: sadness, anger, loneliness… Those feelings perhaps become difficult to express because of the intolerable pain they induce. The emotional impact of a print is more mediated than that of a painting: there is no direct aesthetic contact with the materials, with the colours and therefore the distance between work and the onlooker increases. Even the tools, given their limited malleability, not to mention the physical fatigue they produce in the artist – in particular woodcutting - as well as the meticulous care taken in the detail lead the observer to think that there is something that needs to be kept away, under control, that emerges with difficulty. A struggle against the material, symbolizing the fight against society and against the disease afflicting him, is the theme the artist deals with in his works. Another contradiction is the large size of the paintings: it indeed accentuates the emotional impact of the messages conveyed by the works in an impetuous rather than controlled manner. This contrasts to the attention Thom Shaw pays to the details. Even the colour juxtapositions and the choices of materials expose the viewer to a brutal reality, no middle ground.

Violence is also among the favourite subjects of Thom Shaw: chains, fierce looks, and dominance relationships. The titles, further emphasize that such violence is a container for the artist in the works: hidden fury, hegemony, bodycount. The bodies are represented into a fight. The portrayed bodies are generally male bodies, representatives of self-portraits. Suffering bodies, bent on themselves in postures that recall a painful closure to the rest of the world. The world is the enemy: a difficult mountain to climb, an abyss, a shadow that mocks you. Your body is the enemy: the disease, the syringes, the chains that prevent movement. The artist repeatedly portrays the feeling of being a prisoner of his own body because of the physical illness that hit him. Bodies are presented without skin and with the muscles completely in evidence, with internal organs - the heart in particular - in the foreground. A life-heart that returns in several works, but that seems disconnected from the rest of the body: an independent object within the painting. The skin is transparent: there is lack of distinction between self and other, between in and out. This absence of skin along with the chaining and struggle themes can suggest a difficult relationship with the outside world as a defence against the confusion within the world and the â&#x20AC;&#x153;otherâ&#x20AC;?. However it may also suggest its opposite, namely the yearning to break free from the shackles of the body to be one with the world. The relationship between figure and background seems to confirm this hypothesis: both are black and white, as in an indistinct continuum.

Who am I ? And who is who around me?

CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW

The theme of the mask and the teasing shadow might link to this uncertainty with respect to the question of who am I, but also to a conflict between parts of the self. One pushing the rise, the other blocking it.

Can I elevate myself socially? Here the contradiction emerges again: whiter or blacker? There is so much anger for all this black, and making space to white means overcoming my own social status.

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t I risk losing myself, my origins? So again the black prevails. Aspects of deep melancholic suffering associated with a violent rage come to light in these works. The use of hard materials, the attention to detail and the prevalence of the colour black are all means for trying to limit them. In the fight against his own body, his own self, the outside world, the other would be depicted simultaneously in a condition of furious omnipotence and melancholic impotence. The attempt to separate might suggest a difficulty of reconciling the opposites - the self and the world, the self and the body, black and white, omnipotence and impotence, anger and depression. What is represented here is the deep feeling of being everything and nothing, one thing and its opposite, black and white.

The works of Thom Shaw appear as the search for a sublimation of the painful and continuous tension between opposites, the struggle for identity, which never seems to subside, one picture after another. His art is not informal or evacuative, but formal art, an art in which the emotional content become shape/stroke, emerging with great difficulty. In this continuum and formality are the delicacy and beauty of the works of this artist: the courage to denounce, to expose himself to the gaze of others, without ever letting go too much, but with the slow pace and attention that the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s technical choices require and the care with which very strong contents are filtered to not be overly revealed. Perhaps it is in the empty space between opposing and conflicting elements the fulcrum of the endless tension between them - that you can see the â&#x20AC;&#x153;seed of identityâ&#x20AC;?. Identity never considered as a definitive but rather a living and continuously renewing concept. Thom Shaw as an artist managed to bring the opposites together, and this will appear in the eyes of those who admire his paintings.

CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW

THOM SHAW

THE BODY COUNT

Ink on paper 181,5x91 cm (framed) Undated (circa 2004?) Signed “SHAW” n the lower-right corner

THOM SHAW

ARMAGEDDON

Woodcut print 121,5x121,5 cm (framed) Cincinnati, 1998 Signed “T. G. Shaw 1998 A/P1” around the lower-right border.

THOM SHAW

UNTITLED SELF PORTRAIT

Ink on paper 77x102,7 cm (framed) Cincinnati, 2001 Signed “SHAW” to the lower-right corner.

THOM SHAW

THE MALCOM X PARADOX: POVERTYâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S PARADISE #10 Ink on paper 57x76 cm Undated (circa 1999) Unsigned

THOM SHAW

UNTITLED N°1

Woodcut print 87x199 cm (framed) Cincinnati, 2004 Signed “T. G. Shaw 2004” on the lower-right corner

THOM SHAW

SELF-PORTRAIT: ABYSS

Pen and ink on paper 57x76cm Undated Signed “SHAW” to the lower-right border Exhibited at the Weston Art Gallery (Cincinnati, OH), on the occasion of the solo show Inner Sanctums, Urban Medals and Other Short Subjects (08/06/2001 01.09.2001)

THOM SHAW

BACKSTREET EULOGY

Woodcut print 86,5x130,5 cm Cincinnati, 1998 Signed “T. G. Shaw 1998” to the lower-right corner Stamped “SHAW” in red ink to the lower-right corner

THOM SHAW

UNTITLED N°2

Woodcut print 91x132 cm Cincinnati, 1995 Signed “T. G. Shaw 1995” to the lower-right corner Stamped “SHAW” two times in blue and red ink to the lower-right corner

THOM SHAW

HEGEMONY: HIDDEN FURY

Woodcut print 89x129 cm Cincinnati, 1995 Signed “T. G. Shaw 1995” in pencil to the lower-right corner Stamped “SHAW” in black ink to the lower-right corner

THOM SHAW

UNTITLED N°3

Pen and ink on paper 21x30,5 cm Undated (circa 2000) Signed “SHAW” to the lower-right corner

THOM SHAW

SELF PORTRAIT: REDEMPTIVE MASK Pen and ink on paper 20,5x30,5 cm Undated (circa 2002) Signed “SHAW” to the lower-right corner

THOM SHAW

UNTITLED N°4

Ink on paper 21x30,5 cm Undated Signed “SHAW” to the lower-right corner

THOM SHAW

UNTITLED N°5

Ink on paper 23x25,5 cm Undated Signed “SHAW” to the lower-right corner

CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW

Personal Exhibitions

1973

Thom Shaw at the Miller Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

1990

Deybejammin’ at the Isobel Neal Gallery (Chicago, Illinois) Dread Prints at the Closson’s Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

1991

New Woodcuts ath the Koster Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

1993

The Malcom X Paradox at the Union Terminal Museum (Cincinnati, Ohio) Debejammin’ at the Sinclair Community College (Dayton, Ohio)

1994

Thom Shaw at the Marta Hewett Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

1995

Hegemony: The Hidden Fury at The Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, Ohio)

1996

The Malcom X Paradox at The Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, Ohio)

1997

The Malcom X Paradox at The Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University (Milwakee, Wisconsin)

1998

Thom Shaw: The first thirty years at the Kentucky University Fine Arts Center (Lexington, Kentucky)

1999

Personal Impressions: The art of Thom Shaw at The African American Atelier (Greensboro, North Carolina)

2000

Hard Core to the Very Edge at The Hiestand Galleries (Miami, Florida) Inner Sanctums, Urban Medals and Other Short Subjects at the Suzanna Terrill Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2001

Personal Impressions at the Dayton Visual Arts Center (Dayton, Ohio) Choice of Weapons at the Phreibe Gallery (Oshkosh, Wisconsin) Inner Sanctums, Urban Medals and Other Short Subjects at 1912 Gallery (Emery, Virginia)

2001

Inner Sanctums, Urban Medals and Other Short Subjects: Paintings and drawings by Thom Shaw at the Weston Art Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio) Thom Shaw at the Felix Jenewein Gallery (Kutná Hora, Czech Rep.)

2002

Inner Sanctums, Urban Medals and Other Short Subjects at the Cocelia Cocker Gallery (Hartville, South Carolina)

2003

Thom Shaw’s Homecoming at the Chidlaw Gallery - Cincinnati Art Academy (Cincinnati, Ohio) Personal Impressions at the Huntington Museum of Art (Huntington, West Virginia) Inner Sanctums / Urban Sanctities at the Olin Art Gallery – Kenyon College (Gambier, Ohio)

2004

Personal Impressions at the South Bend Museum (South Bend, Indiana) Personal Impressions at the Art Academy of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, Ohio) Personal Impressions at the Sheldon Swope Museum of Art (Terre Haute, Indiana) Personal Impressions at the Olin College Gallery – Kenyon College (Kenyon, Ohio) A Choice of Weapons II at ArtWorks Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2005

Personal Impressions at The Taft Art Museum (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2006

Choice of Weapons III at the Taft Museum of Art (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2009

Life Stories – 360 Degrees at The Art Beyond Boundaries Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio) Life Stories at Ruthe G. Pearlman Gallery – Cincinnati Art Academy (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2010

Webejammin: spired Paintings from the 1980’s at the Miller Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio) Remembering Thom at The Art Beyond Boundaries Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW

Collective Exhibitions

1980

The 1st Annual Atlanta Life National Art Competition and Exhibition at Atlanta Life Insurance Co. (Atlanta, Georgia)

1981

The 2nd Annual Atlanta Life National Art Competition and Exhibition at Atlanta Life Insurance Co. (Atlanta, Georgia)

1983

The 3rd Annual Atlanta Life National Art Competition and Exhibition at Atlanta Life Insurance Co. (Atlanta, Georgia)

1984

African American Art in Atlanta: Public and Corporate Collections at High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia)

1985

The 5th Annual Atlanta Life National Art Competition and Exhibition at Atlanta Life Insurance Co. (Atlanta, Georgia) Black Creativity at the Museum of Science and History (Chicago, Illinois)

1990

The 10th Annual Atlanta Life National Art Competition and Exhibition at Atlanta Life Insurance Co. (Atlanta, Georgia) Black Alumni at the Art Academy of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, Ohio) National Works on Paper at the Second Street Gallery (Charlottesville, Virginia)

1991

Visual Perceptions: Twenty-two African American designers challenge modern stereotypes at the Parsons School of Design (New York) Recent Drawings at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, Massachusetts) Black / White Works at Spaces (Cleveland, Ohio)

1992

Refigured at San Giuseppi Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

1993

Sister City Cultural Exchange (Kharkov, Ukraine)

1994

Hale Woodruff Memorial Exhibition: Curator’s Choice at The Studio Museum (Harlem, New York)

1997

Hadithi: New York by seven artist of the Umoja Artists Alliance at the Weston Art Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2001

Friends’ Small Works at the Suzanna Terrill Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2002

Art from the Ashes: Day of destrcuction inspires year of creation (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2004

Cincinnati Portfolio III at the Weston Art Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2005

Ideas into Objects: Reinterpreting the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci at the Weston Art Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2006

Ben Allen Collection of American Art at ArtWorks (Cincinnati, Ohio) Twenty Years and Evolving at Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center (Covington, Kentucky)

2007

New Horizons: Rewards of Time and Place at The Riffe Gallery – Ohio Arts Council (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2009

African American Images and Artists from the Swope Collection at the Swope Art Museum (Terre Haute, Indiana)

2010

Coast to Coast at The Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2011

Artists as Activists at The Artisans Enterprise Center (Covington, Kentucky)

2012

Beyond Emancipation at The Kennedy Height Arts Center (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2014

With and Without: Challenges at The Carnegie Galleries (Covington, Kentucky)

CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW

Awards

1985

First prize for graphics at the collective exhibition Black Creativity at the Museum of Science and History (Chicago, Illinois)

1990

Third prize at the collective exhibition National Works on Paper at the Second Street Gallery (Charlottesville, Virginia)

1997

Artist-in-Residence at the Headlands Center for Arts (Sausalito, California)

2000

Artist-in-Residence at the Miami University (Miami, Florida)

2005

Duncanson Artist-in-Residence at The Taft Art Museum (Cincinnati, Ohio)

2007

Ph.D. Honoris Causa from The Cincinnati Art Academy (Cincinnati, Ohio)

Museums hosting works of Thom Shaw Akron Art Museum (Akron, Ohio) Swope Art Museum (Terre Haute, Indiana) University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, Ohio) Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, Ohio) Cairo University (Cairo, Egypt) Chase Manhattan Bank (New York) High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia) Houston Museum of Fine Art (Houston, Texas) Huntington Museum of Art (Huntington, Virginia)

CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW

M창ver창 Collection

All the artworks included in this catalogue are exclusive property of M창ver창 Collection, and are available for collectors and art-lovers. You may visit our page for updated collection information: www.facebook/mavera.collection For any kind of inquiry you may contact: Milano Istanbul

Luca Pizzocheri Daniele Imbimbo

+39 328 716 5454 +90 536 621 9194

CONTRASTING OPPOSITES: LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN THE LIFE AND ART OF THOM SHAW