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Denyse Thomasos Paintings garners the first major retrospective at the AGO
BY SYDNEE WALCOTT
For those who love to learn about history and contemporary issues through artwork, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) is giving people the opportunity to explore these topics through paintings and photographs at an exhibit they have available for a limited time.
From October 5th, 2022 until February 20th, 2023, the AGO will hold its first major retrospective of paintings created by late painter, Denyse Thomasos.
The exhibit, known as “Denyse Thomasos: Just Beyond,” is set to feature more than 70 paintings and works on paper from almost 40 years ago alongside archived photographs, sketches, interviews, and documentary footage of Thomasos at work.
The day before the exhibit was open to the public, members of the media had the chance to get a view of the exhibit through a press preview curated by: Renée van der Avoird, Assistant Curator, Canadian Art, AGO; Sally Frater, Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Guelph and Michelle Jacques, Head of Exhibitions and Collections/ Chief Curator.
The first piece of work viewers will notice as soon as they enter the exhibit will be a large-scale photograph of the artist working on a piece called Hybrid Nations.
In 2005, while the AGO was undergoing a major renovation, contemporary artists were invited to the gallery to create site-specific wall works. Thomasos created a massive mural that contained a mixture rendition of a computer-generated panopticon, a building designed to have consistent surveillance of occupants from one authoritative point without the occupants knowing if and when they were being watched or not.
The piece also included hand-painted details of structures and rigid cells that delegate into curved forms that surrounded the computer-generated panopticon.
Thomasos hoped this piece would remind viewers there is a connection between the present-day prison industrial complex and the transatlantic slave trade.
The exhibition will also include some of Thomasos’ earlier work from when she was a graduate student who started as a figurative painter.
In an untitled self-portrait, created when Thomamsos was an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, Renée van der Avoird, one of the exhibit’s curators, describes how the artist portrays herself as a very strong and serious artist.
The painting features Thomasos sitting on a chair with brushes and paint underneath the chair.
“It’s really an opportunity, 10 years after passing to look at the impact of her work,” said Sally Frator, one of the guest curators. Frater describes the exhibit as a celebration of her work and the sheer brilliance of her artistry practice.
Two things Frater looks forward to when the public has the opportunity to look at Thomasos’ work is the interest in hearing the reactions of people who are encountering her work for the first time and hearing the experiences of people who knew Thomasos through work and through those who have maintained a friendship with her and seeing all of her work being featured in the AGO.
“I think it is entirely fitting that this retrospective is opening in Toronto,” said Frater who shares how Toronto has been formative to Thomasos’ development as an artist.
After the exhibit concludes in Winter 2023, it will make a few more stops at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon in Spring 2023, and at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Thomasos, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago and raised in Toronto, received her BA in painting and art history from the University of Toronto in 1987, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & and Sculpture in 1988, and enrolled at Yale University where she would receive her MFA in painting and sculpture in 1989.
That same year, Thomasos would have her first solo exhibition at the Alpha Gallery in Boston.
Thomasos’ was at the height of her career with major museum shows, gallery representation in New York and Toronto, and achieving many prominent awards when she passed away in 2012.