{"id":22215,"date":"2022-02-22T09:00:22","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=22215"},"modified":"2022-02-22T09:14:41","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T17:14:41","slug":"denyse-thomasos-exhibit-odyssey-chaotic-emotional-varied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2022\/02\/22\/denyse-thomasos-exhibit-odyssey-chaotic-emotional-varied\/","title":{"rendered":"Denyse Thomasos exhibit Odyssey<\/em> chaotic, emotional, varied"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denyse Thomasos\u2019s exhibit Odyssey<\/i>, up now at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, explores the feelings of helplessness experienced when humans are shipped like cargo\u2014stacked and piled with no respect for life\u2014in the slave trade.<\/p>\n

The work of Thomasos\u2014who died in 2012\u2014is shown in Odyssey <\/i>in two rooms; a video is screened in a third.<\/p>\n

Walking in the first room gave me a feeling of chaos, as the pictures felt like they were screaming at me. Thomasos manages to convey the feeling the slaves must have felt while being on these ships, and she draws you into a scene of boats and lines: you never see people in her paintings, but those lines seem to show every lost soul.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Denyse Thomasos\u2019 Excavations: Jodhpur Rooftops<\/em>, 2007 (courtesy of the Estate of Denyse Thomasos and Olga Korper Gallery).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The experience is intense\u2014by all means, it should be. If a painting can make you feel like this, you\u2019re standing in front of great artwork. Suddenly you\u2019re connected to all those lives lost to slavery.<\/p>\n

Her paintings from the \u201890s follow more of an earth-tone colour scheme, while paintings of later stages of her life become more colourful, mostly with red and pink tones. The paintings also become more abstract.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The lines in these paintings almost seem like a soul count and the running colour looks like tears for each soul. Cages form into ship-like structures and she doesn\u2019t leave much empty space in her paintings. They are a very real impression of how she tries to process the cruelty that can\u2019t be undone.<\/p>\n

The layering of very earthly mixed colours show influences from her Chinese, East Indian, Trinidadian, and African roots. There is just so much texture and variety in her pictures.<\/p>\n

Her earlier work is on big canvas while the last of her works found in her private studio are more abstract. It almost feels like she moved on from a state where she tried to convey that crowded-space feeling as a process into confusion.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very impressive how her paintings speak\u2014there is much to learn for anyone interested in the arts. These paintings show how much you can say with a couple of earthy tones and how much an artist can transform from one state of mind into another.<\/p>\n

While Thomasos\u2019 life\u2019s work seems unfinished because of her sudden death, through the paintings she\u2019s left behind she gives the opportunity to the open-minded to find a way to process and look out for solutions for a better future.<\/p>\n

Odyssey
\n<\/i>Until Sunday, March 13
\n$11 student ticket, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
\naggv.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Denyse Thomasos\u2019s exhibit Odyssey, up now at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, explores the feelings of helplessness experienced when humans are shipped like cargo\u2014stacked and piled with no respect for life\u2014in the slave trade. The work of Thomasos\u2014who died in 2012\u2014is shown in Odyssey in two rooms; a video is screened in a third. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22216,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22217,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22215\/revisions\/22217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}