SELECTED WORKS ’23 - ’25, IV: Will Thurman

It's not safe to draw the boogeyman
The irreproachables
There is a woman in my building who, despite -25C
temperatures and gale force winds, steps out every
evening for her nightly cigarette in a light jacket and
sandals.
Eating strange fruit that doesn't exist yet
People from the past taking a machete to high-
grass. Only the Rhino bears witness. And don't board
ships captained by the nameless.
I thought I recognized this model in the Moschino ad
Aren't you tired of this? The exact same exchange
between the same moving parts that can only feign
emotion
The original elephant was more handsome. But this
one beckons and says softly: "Here, drink my water, it's
pure. I only take from the source."
Lessons learnt and forgotten
89' was a good year
The scratched out text says "if the internal clock was
always set to PM."
self-evident
The way the paint falls
At times, on very very rare occasions, certain things
are…
The delusion of disjointedness
Foreign language acquisition-maintenance and glimpses
of an impossible
It'll kill you in the right way. How and when is the
secret
An exception
Stairclimber
Snowplow scours midnight streets waiting for
snowstorm. Meanwhile, in the tropics, they have the sun

During my years in the Highlands, on nights when things got bad, I'd drive down the pass before dawn and find a room behind the Liên Nghĩa central market. It was a mish-mash town of produce sellers, itinerant merchants, Mekong Valley healers, hustlers, scammers, and hill tribes from southern China.

At the end of a dead-end street sat a wooden pre-liberation era pagoda. The head abbot called himself Teacher Slick. He enjoyed coffee and wore an army surplus flak jacket and owned a Ford pick-up truck. He was the most unholy holy-man I'd ever met, but was honest and authoritative in his failures, possessing the supreme mindfulness of someone who accepts contradiction without apology and said once: "Buddha ate meat from time to time. You don't need to abstain to become Buddha." Another time, I asked Slick why he joined the monastery. He answered, "Motherfucker, I'dev gone into the military if it wasn't for the communists."

On my last trip down the pass, I found my way back to Teacher Slick's pagoda. He greeted me with the affected coldness of someone who knows they're never going to see their friend again. I showed him the paintings I'd been working on. He poured himself tea and seemed restless but then smiled slyly and finally said: "They're life paintings."

Will Thurman

Galerie Quynh, Temnikova & Kasela Gallery and ArtDepoo are excited to be collaborating for the first time to present Will Thurman's third major solo exhibition SELECTED WORKS: '23 - '25, IV in his adopted home of Tallinn, Estonia. 

Thurman's new work expands on Life Paintings (2015 - ongoing), a series of works with storylines that send us tumbling through a parallel universe not quite distinct from our own, where the comedic blends with the downright bleak and sadistic. His canvases contain paintings within paintings - mise en abyme that draw attention to the plethora of lenses through which a single story can be told - and retold, and retold. Thurman is meticulous in his expression; for the artist painting is disciplined, routine labor. In his latest paintings, the canvases are more heavily layered; the oil paint itself becomes another actor in his topsy-turvy scenes.