Thomas Lail: Crowd

Thomas Lail:  Crowd

Thomas Lail’s  work, Crowd,  an eleven-panel installation constructed for each of the exterior street-level window niches in the historic St. Anthony’s Church on Madison Avenue in Albany, NY opened May 29 and will be on view for one-year.     Made from thousands of pieces of paper cut in diminishing sizes, Crowd is Lail’s largest work to date in the Capital District.  Each window panel is collaged with black and white reproductions of images of gatherings of people: crowds, protests and demonstrations, representing, as Lail states, “the accumulation of bodies that lead to utopian ideals or incremental change.”   

Lail’s xerographic collage process includes enlarging, copying and re-copying his source images until all detail is obliterated and only a graphic, abstracted image remains.  These copies are cut and collaged, layer upon layer into large scale abstractions. It is only upon observing the work both from a distance and at close range that the source images become decipherable and the latent content of the work becomes legible.  

Though based in historic imagery acquired from archives, news sources and journals, Lail’s methodology results in images that, like the utopian experiments they picture, disintegrate into near illegibility and non-existence.   

The dissolution of the image is not, however, entirely abject. Though communal utopias and protests are, by nature, short lived, they, like Lail’s images, persevere in bits and pieces, coalescing into new organizational groupings, new hopes, new crowds.

Crowd will remain on view indefinitely.
Grand Street Community Arts Center, Albany, NY

opening reception for the artist ,Friday, May 29, 2015 from 5:00 – 6:30. 

An illustrated catalogue with essay by artist and freelance arts writer Amy Griffin will be available at the reception.

Visit grandarts.org for directions.