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 Andrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to present
Tom Duncan : Selected Works extended thru June 26, 2004. The opening reception will be
on Saturday, April 17 from 4 to 6 pm.
Tom Duncan's memory pieces recreate or refer to real-life events
from his youth growing up in Scotland during World War II, and in
New York City where he arrived in 1947 at the age of eight. Some
of these are actual episodes from the past, as in Mummy, why are
the German Prisoners of War at Church With Us, a depiction of
Tom, his mother and little brother at mass, the pews lined with
bearded German POW's. Duncan recounts being about 5 and
asking his mother to explain how the POW's could simultaneously
be good guys as Catholics but evil as Nazis. Other works like "Five
Catholic High School Girls Get Dressed" pay satirical homage to
Duncan's schoolboy fantasies fueled by his repressive parochial
school upbringing.
Many of the artist's works look like homemade versions of a Marx
Playset from the 1950's or a detailed landscape borrowed from a
Lionel train set display. Some, in fact, utilize vintage found objects
such as metal toy iers, cars, trucks and trains, and fabricated
miniature sculpted and painted clay cast in plaster or fired terra
cotta figures for use in his glorified tableaux, assemblages and
reliefs.
Duncan's fall 2002 retrospective was reviewed by Peter Kalb for
Art in America (Sept 2003) and by Jenifer Borum in Raw Vision
(Spring 2003). In December 2003 his work was included in On the
Outskirts : Art Brut, Outsider Art and Neuve Invention in Miami
Beach during Art Basel Miami Beach. A video documentary Tom
Duncan: The Art of War and Peace was completed in 2003 and
will be available for screening at the gallery.
Duncan has exhibited widely in New York including at the Drawing
Center and the New Museum, in New Jersey at the Noyes
Museum (solo exhibit), and at the American Visionary Art Museum
in Baltimore. His work is in numerous public collections including
the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Library of Congress,
and the Box Art Museum in Hoghem, Sweden.
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