A WINDOW TO EUROPE: THROUGH ART & LITERATURE
FEATURING MICHAEL THRON
October 17 - November 2, 2021
Plain Sight DC and the EU National Institutes of Culture in Washington, DC present A Window to Europe: Through Literature and Art, a series of short exhibitions featuring eleven visual artists from the Washington, DC region who will create work in response to eleven books by European writers, as part of the 2021 Europe Readr project. In this exhibition, Michael Thron creates work in response to Portuguese writer Bernardo P. Carvalho’s book Trocoscópio.
This exhibition is presented in partnership with EUNIC DC, the EU Delegation to the United States, and the Instituto Camões, and Embassy of Portugal, Washington DC.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: Michael Thron’s piece EXCHANGESCOPE, like author Bernardo P. Carvalho’s Trocoscópio, is “a fabulous machine that can change the world, shuffling its parts and giving them back, showing everything in new and unexpected forms and arrangements." Inspired by Carvalho’s words, Thron used his signature process of gathering, disassembling, reengineering, and distilling objects in order to construct a moment where the past and present meet. Repurposed lead and tin sheets from organ pipes, salvaged from two churches in Virginia, become a new form that still holds the history of its origin through materiality. The patchwork-like, modular construction, reassembling into other possibilities, evolves form into a veneer.
Michael Richard Thron (born 1990) in Stamford CT, is an MFA graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, and received his BFA from Syracuse University. His practice investigates materiality, entropy, and negative space as a material and tangible component. Through gathering, manipulation, and replication his work acts as a conduit to examine the evolution of the self, exploring how a sculpture can exist “in” space or “as” space. It sometimes acts as a reminder of personal identity, memory, the human condition. He is a reward recipient of the International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture, The Mid-Atlantic Sculpture Prize, and Daniel Ohlke Award, and as well has been a resident artist at Salem Art Works and Gilbertsville Expressive Movement. He has exhibited at the London Biennale, Everhart Museum, and Katonah Museum of Art, and part of the Studio 80 Sculpture Park and St Anselm’s Abby public art collections.
Bernardo P. Carvalho (1973) is a writer and illustrator for children and young adults. He studied visual communication and co-founded the Planet Tangerina publishing house in 1999, where he works today. He has received numerous national and international awards for his work, including the Opera Prima Award at the Bologna Book Fair in 2015. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages of the world.
A Window Through Europe
This exhibition is part of A Window to Europe: Through Literature and Art, a series of short exhibitions featuring eleven visual artists from the Washington, DC region who are creating work in response to eleven books by European writers, as part of the 2021 Europe Readr project. Featured artists are Hoesy Corona, Alanna Reeves, Mike Thron, Michal Gavish, Julie Wills, MK Bailey, Antonio McAfee, Emily Fussner, Stephanie Williams, Lionel Frazier White III, and Sobia Ahmad.
