andy t’s urban vision 2001-2024 at stamelos gallery
“Andy T’s Urban Vision, 2001-2024 is the first mid-career retrospective of Detroit-based installation artist Andrew W. Thompson, popularly known as “Andy T.” As a sculptor, Thompson gives new life to discarded objects such as tires, grocery bags, plastic bottles, and mailing envelopes, thereby integrating questions of environmental, social, and economic sustainability into the context of art. Treating art as a “fundamental life-organizing principle,” the artist observes, researches and interprets how everyday items circulate, shape, and express social beliefs and cultural customs. Over the past two decades, Kansas City and Detroit have stimulated an artistic investigation of sociocultural topics such as electoral mapping, fluctuations in money’s value, urban planning methods, waste management tactics, food sourcing policies, body image and clothing choices and the effects of information storage on knowledge growth.”
This exhibition appears as archeological remains of what is characteristically performative work. The examination of what humans consider detritus accumulating into very noticeable consequences is documented via photographic and physical testimony. In Month of Uniforms Calendar, Thompson creates an outfit for a specific activity like shopping, shoveling snow or going to a wedding. These garments represent acute pressure to conform to socially acceptable parameters in appearance.
Due to 2020’s glaring voting inequity reveal, legislatures have been redistricting in order to level the playing field—or make it even more racist—to garner the results they want. Thompson presents Dearborn’s district in multicolored tape laid out on the floor in a kind of abstract hopscotch grid illustrating how much this predominantly Arab* community has changed from 1893-2023.
Spire of Knowledge is pitifully small with not much afforded for remedy. At least Shakespeare makes an appearance.
The assemblage of materials, textures, colors and sound registers a profound investment by the artist. Taking time to peruse Thompson’s fastidious recording of social explorations could lead any viewer to reconsider the value in items humans customarily discard with little consideration, including each other.
On view through April 21st at Stamelos Gallery on the first floor of the UM Dearborn Mardigian Library 4901 Evergreen, Dearborn
*2020 census data reports 54.5% of Dearborn residents are of Middle Eastern or North African ancestry.
**images are mine
direct quote from gallery materials
I’m glad you’re here and thank you for reading. If you are able, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. This will gain you access to every audio and video interview posted since inception and my undying gratitude for your support! Thank you!
SHOWS OPEN THIS WEEKEND