Locks Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Thomas Chimes. Thomas Chimes: On Alfred Jarry, will be on view at Locks Gallery from June 18 through July 16th, 2010.
Alfred Jarry, the French poet and playwright, and originator of Pere Ubu was a frequent subject of Thomas Chimes’s paintings. Having discovered Jarry in the early 60s and sketched drawings of Ubu in 1966, Chimes’ first painted image of Alfred Jarry dates to 1973. This presentation of Chimes’ work focuses on both Jarry’s image and his writing as a subject for Chimes and includes paintings created between 1976 and 2002.
As Michael Taylor noted in his 2007 retrospective of Chimes, of all his artistic forebears and influences, Jarry was the foremost, and Chimes continued to draw inspiration from his writing up through his last works.
On view are several paintings from the 80s - profile views of Jarry - a series of “white portraits” that became among the artist’s best known works; several of these paintings are borrowed from private collections for this display.
With a career spanning over five decades, the work of Thomas Chimes is in the collections of such museums as the Allentown Art Museum, Centre Pompidou National Museum of Modern Art, Paris, Corcoran Museum of Art, Delaware Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Phoenix Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Wadsworth Atheneum Art Museum and Yale University Art Gallery. He has exhibited at institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art; The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin; The Institute of Contemporary Art, PA; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; and The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
