Caragh Thuring: Builder

Press Release

Corbett vs. Dempsey is pleased to present Builder, an exhibition of new work by London-based painter Caragh Thuring. This is Thuring's first exhibition in Chicago. For this group of paintings, Thuring's images – some photographs she's taken, some images of her own previous works – were woven into the fabric of a canvas, onto which she then painted. This is the first time such clear figurative imagery has appeared in her work, as foundations for more complex painterly responses. With tapestry-like precision, the underlying images are locked into a spatial matrix. Each image becomes material, a palpable object with warp and weft, configuring a ground that goes deeper than surface. These canvases have a rich relationship to particularity; some conjure a specific time, place, or object, while others are more mysterious, ambiguity deployed at the service of their poetic power. Using imagery as one might use color or contrast, de-emphasizing the particular depiction, Thuring chooses references to speak to some inner-space mysteries, opening up the non-specific places for psyches to roam free, to associate at will, to build upon, to mix field, ground, shape, and reference in a concatenation of allure. In "Desire Lines" (2019), an image of a New Mexico landscape resembling a classic John Ford film is interjected with a tartan pattern, creating a visual riddle, mercurial in its beautiful, unimaginable story. "Bunnet" (2019) consists of a simple photo of the artist's childhood drawing of her mother, floating without context, like a ghost, a youthful scrawl translated into a field of threads. In "Leaders and Laggards" (2019), spoiled dogs sit aboard a private jet, held in time on a woven background of newspaper stock reports – the sensical taking the nonsensical for a walk. September 6 - October 12, 2019 Opening reception, Friday September 6, 6-8 pm