GRIDWORK

Two artists, one world

By BRENT T. INGRAM

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If a modern artist's job is to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary, Robert Maloney and Sean Thomas are right on point. Gridwork, an exhibit that puts the two regional artists side by side, draws out their similarities—most notably, the inspirations and sources of their keenly designed pieces.

"I've always been interested in architecture," says Thomas. "I've been drawing for as long as I can remember, and I would always conjure up these buildings, imaginary cities and paintings that kind of have an architectural form." Thomas' watercolor and oil paintings show automobiles, cranes and factories through the painter's eye, stripping them of any recognizable landmarks until they are simply ghosts of the machine. "Containers (Orange and Green)" takes the shipping units we know and turns them into an impressionistic Mondrian.

Maloney also strips his forms of their familiarity, though sometimes quite literally. "Promising Future" is a mixed-media work of old advertisements and train cars, layered like strips of old wallpaper. "It's a regurgitation of things that you pass by on a regular basis," says Maloney from his studio in Jamaica Plain. "Some of the pieces I'll just plan out and study for, sometimes do studies on the computer. Some of them start out as experiments, then I realize I have a really cool texture and they just grow from there."

That the two came together was, much like the work itself, somewhat of a coincidence, but also by design. Both had been accepted for solo shows when the timing became a little tight. "The more we thought about it, I was like, 'Oh man, I'm not sure if the deadline is gonna work," says Maloney, "and he was having the same anxiety."

"The more I got to know Robert, the more I got to learn his processes and what he looks at," says Thomas. "We share this affinity for the urban landscape, but the output is totally different. We complement each other well, I feel."

This process continued right to the execution of the exhibit itself. "The two of us hung the show together," says Maloney. "That's pretty rare for any of the Copley Society members to be involved in the hanging. It benefited everyone involved. It was one of those moments of clarity where you're like, 'Why don't we just combine this?'"

Maloney earned his BFA at MassArt, where he still teaches today. Thomas is also from the East Coast—Delaware, to be exact—and resides in Rhode Island, although an observer could never place the work each of them do. They reinterpret forms and ubiquitous motifs that are part of the life of nearly any human being. Thomas' "Sepia Providence" might as well be Washington DC or Cheyenne, Wyo., and "Anachronous" by Maloney is such a splattered crash of construction and stencil, it could easily be Dubai as much as Dorchester. All of which made for an easy assimilation.

"The gallery didn't have to put too much thought into the process," says Maloney. "Sean and I got to fine-tune the placement and really make the most of the gallery space by doing it ourselves."

GRIDWORK

FURTHER EXPLORATIONS INTO

THE URBAN LANDSCAPE

THROUGH FRIDAY 6.15.09

CO|SO UPPER GALLERY

158 NEWBURY ST.

BOSTON

617.536.5049

ARTIST TALK

SATURDAY 6.6.09

4PM/FREE FOR MEMBERS,

$10 NON-MEMBERS

COPLEYSOCIETY.ORG