Tom Price: The Alchemist of Form and Substance

9 hours ago7 min read4 comments

Sculptor Tom Price commands his studio with the focus of a conductor, orchestrating a profound dialogue between raw material and conceptual depth. His practice is a masterclass in material alchemy, where substance is not just shaped but persuaded into revelation.Price’s celebrated investigations, which have captured the art world's attention, spring from a career fueled by an insatiable curiosity for the stories dormant within matter itself. He describes working with high-density polyethylene—the ubiquitous material of common plastic chairs—melting it and guiding its flow over steel and bronze armatures.This is less an act of manufacturing and more a partnership with the material's own memory and desires. The outcomes are forms suspended between the familiar human figure and pure abstraction, much like a cinematographer uses chiaroscuro to imply a character's inner world without a word.Price never forsakes the figure; instead, he refines it, stretching its essence until a torso and a landmass become one, compelling a re-examination of how we represent the body. This fluid continuum between figuration and abstraction is the core of his work, a visual thesis arguing they are not opposites but points on a single line.He traces a lineage from the fragmented surfaces of Cubism to the liquid trajectories of his plastic pieces, positing that all art is a translation of the seen world into the felt one. His 'Carbonworks' series, for example, sees carbon fiber painstakingly layered and cured, yielding objects with the sleek futurism of a science-fiction artifact yet imbued with the hand-crafted spirit of a relic.It is a duality akin to masterful historical fiction, where period detail merges with modern sensibility to forge the timeless. Price’s approach is rooted in radical material inquiry, yet it is never inquiry for its own sake.Every decision—be it embedding recycled textiles with asphalt or coaxing aluminum into supple, fabric-like folds—serves a deeper philosophical quest. He is, at heart, a narrator whose lexicon is tensile strength, thermal conductivity, and pigment.The results are sculptures that feel both uncannily known and profoundly strange, as if shaped by elemental forces of erosion or heat, yet bearing the deliberate mark of human intention. In an art landscape often divided by strict genres, Price’s work defiantly inhabits the in-between, demonstrating that the most powerful meanings emerge not from formal or material purity, but from the complex, beautiful, and disquieting fusion that occurs when they are compelled to speak to one another.

#Sculpture

#Tom Price

#Material Experimentation

#Figuration

#Abstraction

#Artist Interview

#Contemporary Art

#featured

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