Hey there,
I wanted to share some recent pieces I’ve written elsewhere – beginning with an interview with Thomas J. Price.
The full interview is available in print, the spring issue of Parnass (excerpt online), but I was particularly struck by his discussion of his early performance piece, Licked.
Intense, bodily and durational, the work is nothing like the aspects of his practice you may be familiar with. I was speaking with Price ahead of a major touring exhibition at the Kunsthalle Krems, and was quite surprised to hear about its inclusion, as he had previously distanced himself from the work. Now, many years later, he’s returned to the piece, and I think it opens a whole new way of thinking about his figurative work.
Excerpt from our conversation below:
Thomas J Price, Licked, 2001, Performance, © Thomas J Price, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Oh wow. Is this the first time Licked will be shown since it was originally performed?
Yes, it’s the first time. I only just dug out and digitised the tapes. You know, it brings up a lot of memories about that time. I think it was a great work. All I’ve done before is show it on slides during a talk, so people just assume that I'm a figurative sculptor. And I'm like, no, no, no… the figuration is a strategy. This is what the practice is about. So showing the actual footage for the first time is going to be pretty special.
That’s what I want to do with the show. Expand people’s conception of why the figuration exists. And so in that way, there will be these paintings called the Inner Optics series, which are all about how the eyes move around a subject, and so the negative space becomes very important because it's also when we don't look. They also connect right back to the animations, which was basically from the other perspective, it was about watching somebody look and feel. There's a nice circle of meaning created between the works.
I don’t want to paraphrase you too much, but I recall in a previous interview you suggested feeling somewhat uncomfortable about the reaction to Licked, and had moved away from it.
With the work, I was interested in asking if people can register enzymes without the presence of a person. That’s connected with this idea of an invisible or subliminal work about the unconscious. But then my tongue began to bleed during the performance, and quite early on, it became a really visual work. So it totally flipped the script and became a very visible portrait.
It was supposed to be a subtle work about feelings beneath the surface. Yet it became a very overt work, which was being connected to other kinds of shocking art. It was a very successful work in terms of being popular – which, I think can be… seductive. When I found myself coming up with more extreme physical acts for other performances, I just felt this is not it. And that's when I moved to the animations.
Some further reading on Licked
In The Guardian:
He certainly made a name for himself with the performance piece, called Licked, all while he was still a student at Chelsea College of Art. "People thought I'd used a paintbrush – people thought I'd faked it.
"After that, I started dreaming up other performances. I really got into demonstrations of sacrifice, I guess," he says.
"But then I realised I was seeking some weird approval, like an actor or performer needs applause. And I didn't want that – I wanted to say things people weren't going to applaud at all," he says.
So he turned to sculpture, teaching himself how to work with traditional methods. "Today, I try to take a less gimmicky approach, if I'm honest. And I've got such respect for sculpture. But in the contemporary art world, it is sort of sniffed at," he says.
https://www.thomasjprice.com/licked
https://www.hauserwirth.com/ursula/34935-frisson-difference-sculpture-thomas-j-price/
https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/thomas-j-price-worship