Tom Humphreys at Christian Andersen

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While Hupmphrey's gang has gone onto bigger better things, Humphreys doubled down on the stupid. Paintings like found in the bins of art school. The revulsion we feel at "bad painting" becomes proof of at least some internal power of painting. The Kippenberger game of self-infliction without the personality panache to recoup it, instead, again, paintings that don't relieve their stupid, but rub their face in it, even yours. This could be a Vittorio Brodmann or Nolan Simon situation, in which the slacker ruse eventually decurtains its prowess, reveal eyerolling deft brushwork, but Humphreys seems like someone who might commit to mud.

Tom Humphreys at High Art

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A man bent over looking deep into his own anus to find in there a mirror.
Remember as schoolyard kids holding your breath until you passed out as a form of primitive pharmacological entertainment? That's sort of the experience of Humphreys' paintings and sculptures here, deprivation as pleasure. The directness of image construction - why belabor? While others in the circle have moved into production endeavors or installation, Humphreys' has almost doubled down on the crude plaintives. I appreciate this.

“2021” at Sydney

“2021” at Sydney

The decrepit and artifactual, pieces, there's something lovely forlorn about a single butt of trash like a rose. Good trash will bloom in the sun, wilt in the rain. We aspire to be like its emptiness, it vindicates our cities, we can see the whole world like a lens through the one discarded in the gutter. Trash reflects us, because we're better at deciphering ruins than cultures.


See too: Michael E. Smith at Sculpture Center, Nancy Lupo at Kristina Kite & Yuji Agematsu at Miguel Abreu, “May the Bridges I Burn Light the Way” at STANDARD (OSLO)

Tom Humphreys at What Pipeline

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"Contentless” in that it acts as directives for the flows that can brought to it. Looking at a Humphries, like looking at Levine, occurs “in front of the surface of the print;” appropriated markers dispersing visual contact suspended by the information which precedes it, all the informational baggage flaunted by it’s visual void that the mind so adapted to monochromatic thought readily fills in. Its impossible to even see these without thinking about the system that distributes them, the Benedictian monks and organization of chapels all over the world. 

 See too : Group Show at Greene Naftali , Sherrie Levine at Simon Lee , Seven Reeds at Overduin and Co.