Thomas Houseago: Night Sea Journey Lévy Gorvy Dayan

 Thomas Houseago, My Night Sea Journey, 2024, brushed bronze, 26 x 19 x 8 1/2 inches. courtesy: Lévy Gorvy Dayan

 

Lévy Gorvy Dayan
19 East 64th Street, New York, NY

By EDWARD WAISNIS October 28, 2024

In addressing the work of Thomas Houseago I feel compelled to draw attention to the dichotomy between the rawness of the stuff he produces with the refined air of the bastion of elitism that is the gallery’s location. The beauty, and elegance, of these digs, as an exhibition and promotional stage, and the frisson it establishes is palpable. It threw me back to an exhibition of paintings by Georg Baselitz (more on this connection later) at Xavier Fourcade, decades ago that was constructed within the same terrain–the Upper East Side–and produced a similar sensation.

Houseago has navigated his way, through either finagle or talent into the lair of the 1%, the hall of the mountain king that is commonly held as potentially more corrosive than his ‘demon’  to the soul of an artist that playing in the big league can inveigle. The principals behind the gallery (the gallery staff are trained to refer to them as ‘founders’) forged their own respective careers in the world of auctions and private clients and now find themselves treading on mega gallery turf, namely investor backed and owned valuables to be bought and traded, entailing savvy selling on all levels. All of that aside, despite the hovering curiosity I hold about the machinations of the art world, and having had my little dalliance, I promise to focus on the artist and his work from herein.

 Thomas Houseago, Installation view showing, at center Minotaur–Janus, 2024, plaster, redwood, hemp, rebar, charcoal and pastel, 95 x 48 x 33 5/8 inches. courtesy: Lévy Gorvy Dayan

A hand painted flag and the presentation of a huge ink on paper drawing in a display window setting the spirit outside. I found the flag, in particular, in its throw back to the days of SoHo as the major gallery district, something of a harbinger of humble respect. By ‘planting his flag’ and given the extent of personal trauma and travails–a history of childhood abuse–that have been his story, and that inhabit and give cause to the exhibition, it is a righteous flair of victorious bravado.

Hailing from Leeds, Houseago now works and resides in Los Angeles and Malibu, respectively, after an extended stint in the hinterlands of Europe that is Brussels that may explain the whiff of coming out of nowhere despite having labored on the West Coast for two decades.

Having studied under Marlene Dumas, there is no indication that whatever influence was, or was not, imparted optically. While Houseago did not absorb the fey quality that she deploys on a regular basis, they do share an aroma of death. Another aspect that persuades placement within the modernist expressionist canon is the work’s focus on personal struggle while generally eschewing political concerns of the day, refined away from postmodernism. Antiquity, nature, personal yearnings, all things romantic and transformative rule.

 Thomas Houseago, Snake Demond, 2024, patinated bronze, 22 13/16 x 16 15/16 x 15 3/4 inches. courtesy: Lévy Gorvy Dayan

A short film, I Don’t Work for Peanuts: I Work for God. fills in the biographical details. Ably supported by the gorgeous predominately black & white cinematography by virtuoso of the lens Jody Lee Lipes, who deploys flitting diopter assisted racked focus shifts that lend to the analytical tack taken by director Andrew Dominick, who also appears sporadically to cajole Houseago into delivering the goods producing banter that suggests friendship. Whether newly established or long-term is never divulged. Whether long-term or newly found is not divulged. aided Music created by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis that does not clamor but rather dings in at the crucial moments, punctuating and lifting, and only classically building to a crescendo as the coda switches from the sublime black & white to full color in order to accommodate rendering the work itself. And, of course, at the center of it all stands Houseago resembling Flea, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, specifically as he was seen in Bruce Weber’s Let’s Get Lost. I am a huge fan of this fifty-odd minute minor masterpiece and recommend taking the time to search it out. I recognize the marketing tool that it is, and it is a zinger in that respect.

Back to that incubus that crops up in the work, and whom Houseago now identifies as his dead father, through manifestations in various forms, but predominately as skulls, masks and minotaurs. Spread over three palatial floors, with the ground floor presenting a panoply of sculptures that play out variations of this devil, interspersed with creatures from nature and mythology and anchored by a chamber with the first of three wall-hugging mural-like paintings serving as exposition and background narratively.

 Thomas Houseago, Self Portrait Disassociating I, 2024, plaster and redwood, 50 1/4 x 19 7/7 x 19 15/16 inches. courtesy of: Lévy Gorvy Dayan

 

Houseago puts plaster and rebar to steel, redwood and bronze to task to fulfill his vision. There are several renditions of a head, one being a constructivist work built from rusted steel plate arranged, a la Naum Gabo, as an interlocking puzzle, Snake Demon, 2024. Another, Night Sea Journey, 2024 (synchronous with the exhibition’s title), in gleaming brushed bronze, showing a delineated face half skull half bearded elder. Could this be the spectral patriarchal visage itself? A near-identical–could this be the original from which the gold version has been cast?–plaster, with chunky accompanying redwood base, ‘version’, is telling in it’s titling, Self Portrait Disassociating I, 2024, positing the drama in assuming the mantle of the departed father.

The largest sculptures, standing  eight-to-ten feet in stature, and ranging from uninflected surfaces respectful of their raw materials, often with a mere flourish or two of charcoal or pastel, to the foreboding effect of dense black patina. The two minotaurs–Minotaur-Janus and Giant minotaur (for DS), both 2024–face off down the passage housing the first of the monumental paintings, Transformation, 2023, applied directly to the wall with staples, as are the additional two on subsequent floors. Climaxing with the Sunrise, 2024, that calls to mind Edvard Munch’s similarly imagined (in subject and measurement) painting The Sun of 1910-11. Harmonizing was the oddity of a large brass sculpture, My Studio Chair & Flowers, 2024, that represented exactly what its title promised. Composed of mid-tone golden Matissian plates growing out of said chair. The forms, while leaning to the floral, called up Richard Diebenkorn’s clubs.

Cave (Leeds to Malibu) 2024, residing on the middle floor, presented a bridge, from the darkness to the light. All three are ten foot high by a whopping sixty-four, sixty-nine and one-hundred and thirteen feet across, respectively. While they hold their ground, utilizing push-pull tactics, richness of pigment and visual storytelling, I can’t help but feel that their juxtaposition with the sculptures is pivotal.

One needs to bring Julian Schnabel into the conversation since his legacy is all over the place here. Like this similarly volcanic predecessor Houseago relies on offering symbolic compositions in heightened scale with highly active surfaces. Houseago’s mark making can be traced in its descent from Munch and Vincent van Gogh, through Schnabel, and, fortunately,  sidestepping the pitfalls of fellow Brit Damien Hirst delving into the production of a prodigious amount of schlock paintings.

Thomas Houseago, Giant Minotaur (for DS), 2024, oil, patinated bronze, 122 1/8 x 29 7/8 x 29 9/16 inches. courtesy: Lévy Gorvy Dayan

 Thomas Houseago, Installation view of: Cave (Leeds to Malibu), 2024, acrylic and oil on canvas, 120 x 819 inches. courtesy: Lévy Gorvy Dayan

 Thomas Houseago, Eclipse II, 2024, plaster, redwood, rebar, and pastel, 723/8 x 33 3/4 x 24 inches. courtesy: Lévy Gorvy Dayan

The use of a chainsaw when working in redwood, Owl Guide (for Dying) and Madness Devouring Our Children (shades of Goya?) both 2024, as well as numerous smaller works, bring in the previously tipped Baselitz, foregoing the wanton clumsiness, fused with the Cycladic.

Then, there are the recurring forms of a vaginal egg. Both a curiosity and a central icon throughout, it is the focus in two of the three parlors on the second floor. From over-sized Cadbury easter egg-like, some mimicking being cracked open revealing their creamy interiors spilling out, Cosmic Egg I  and Cosmic Egg II, both 2023. Two more, Birth I and Birth II, both 2023, mounted atop carved wood totems, recalling Brancusi, that instill reverence and the contrast of pristine plaster against patinated natural redwood, drawing one in with a sense of mystery. These elemental forms as the paramount point of inception and origin, belies Houseago’s proclivity to embrace a return to the womb. A stage he enacts in the film by literally climbing through and into the ‘womb’ of one of his works. A peculiar predilection given his acknowledged disdain for his mother. Such is the quirk of art, it tells the good with the bad, sometimes simultaneously.

 Thomas Houseago, Installation view: Night Sea Journey. courtesy: Lévy Gorvy Dayan

 Thomas Houseago, Cosmic Egg II, 2023, plaster, 64 7/8 x 45 3/4 x 45 3/4 inches. courtesy: Lévy Gorvy Dayan

 Thomas Houseago, Installation view: various small sculptures suite. courtesy: Lévy Gorvy Dayan

 Thomas Houseago, Installation view: Cave (Leeds to Malibu), 2024, acrylic and oil on canvas, 120 x 819 inches, with small sculptures in situ. courtesy: Lévy Gorvy Dayan

A smattering of scuffed white latex on plywood pedestals, though a minor detail, succeed in their unfussy stance and act to mend the work to the studio and the act of production. Amidst this forest, on an elegant low-rise bed of unfinished plywood, reside a range of small works that entice in their variety and sense of play. It is here that some of that famous British homespun wit comes through, brought forth in the depictions of quotidian objects–Cup & Spoon I, Coffee Pot, My Coffee and Fruits, all 2024.

The sole stretched, and more manageable painting (still nine by six feet), Demon Dream II, 2022 is ensconced in it’s own antechamber, depicts skinny looming figures emerging from the gloom and is festooned with everything from kitchen utensils to cans and jars that jut out into the room and activate the surface with the excitement of nonchalance as a compositional approach. These details attest to Houseago’s method of working flat on the ground that carries over to some of the sculptures as indicated by their frontal orientation.

The show is dedicated to Houseago’s mentor Danny Smith–paid homage in inscriptions throughout the space as well as on the work itself–who died in close proximity to the passing of the artist’s abusive father. It was this period of trauma that ricocheted in Houseago’s psyche, bringing past and present into confrontation as motivation to create out of the pure grit of the poetry found in existence.WM

Exhibition was on from September 9 – October 19, 2024