October 2011

if ART Gallery in Columbia, SC, Offers Works by H. Brown Thornton

if ART Gallery in Columbia, SC, is presenting the exhibit, H. Brown Thornton 2007 - 2011, featuring works by this Aiken, SC, artist on view through Oct. 8, 2011. The exhibition will present paintings from the past four years.

Thornton’s aesthetic sensibilities range from non-objective or representational expressionism to Pop Art. The main themes of his work are memories, reality and the unknown.

“Memory represents a tangible awareness of the past,” Thornton says. “Events that have physical remnants and experiences that form our empirical knowledge of reality. At the same time, these memories dissolve, become idealized, fragmented, or outright forgotten. Reality represents our sense of what is true or fact and the ability for this knowledge or truth to change over time. The idea of the unknown represents events of the future, what happens next in an unpredictable reality.”

“On a larger scale, the uncertainty surrounds general questions about being alive,” says Thornton adding. “The idea of people knowing their beginning and inevitable end, this awareness of a limited time alive, a fragmented, idealized, and vague memory of the past, fundamental changes in our day to day life, and complete uncertainty of the future, has branched the work into these three fundamental areas.”

Thornton (b. 1976) is among South Carolina’s main young talents of the past decade. He was included in the 2003 Columbia Museum of Art exhibition The Felt Moment, which showed artists from North and South Carolina and Georgia. A year later he was included in South Carolina Birds: A Fine Arts Exhibition, which traveled to four venues in South Carolina in 2004 - 2006.

Thornton has shown his work, often in solo shows, at Aishu Miura Arts in Tokyo, Japan; Art Miami in Miami, FL; Linda Warren Gallery, Thirteenth Floor Gallery and Verdir in Chciago, IL; Barbara Archer Gallery in Atlanta, GA; the Sumter Gallery of Art, Sumter, SC; if ART Gallery, City Art, Gallery 80808/Vista Studios, the McKissick Museum and the now-defunct Gallery 701 in Columbia; and Jackson Gallery and the Aiken Center for the Arts in Aiken, SC.

Thornton also has designed several music CD and magazine covers. He holds a BFA from the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

For further information check our SC Commercial Gallery listings, call the gallery at 803/238-2351 or e-mail to (wroefs@sc.rr.com).

[ | October 2011 | Feature Articles | Carolina Arts Unleashed | Gallery Listings | Home | ]