Tom H�bert’s night vision

 

My colleague Tom H�bert has a show up at a local college this month, so if you’re in southeastern Connecticut, you should check it out. I love running into Tom in the hallways at Eastern Connecticut State University, where we both teach, because he always has something interesting to say about shows he’s seen or what he’s working on in the studio. He has won many awards and had numerous shows, including exhibitions at O.K. Harris,  Exit Art, and, most recently, Real Art Ways, an innovative non-profit org in Hartford.

After presenting paintings that depict New York art dealers (Joe Amrhein, Derek Eller, Magalena Sawon, and others), in 2005 Tom began a series of NYC gallerinas that featured paintings of aloof gallery workers inset into carefully crafted wooden constructs. These  recalled his early abstract work. The new pieces on display at the beautiful Three Rivers Community College gallery provocatively replace the gallerina images with lifesize inkjet prints of trash accumulated in his studio over the past year. This unsettled trompe-l’oeil world, in which bleach bottles, construction debris, and Amazon.com boxes hover ominously in the night skies, seems like a promising new direction.

“Tom H�bert: Trashing Skies (Collage/Constructions) 2010,” The Gallery at Three Rivers Community College, Norwich, CT. Through November 12, 2010.