CV118 - David Tomas, Speech and silence — Vincent Bonin
Ciel variable 118 - Exhibiting Photography (Fall 2021)
Focus (Single Article, Digital Version)
David Tomas, La parole et le silence | Speech and silence
By Vincent Bonin
Invited by Ciel variable to re-evaluate David Tomas’s practice, Vincent Bonin offers a cross section of the intellectual trajectory of artist and anthropologist Tomas, who died in 2019. Bonin discusses the importance that Tomas accorded to silence, even up to his final work, which bore the ambiguous words “No Lot.” “This ‘no’ now resonates in the posthumous space, as a last form of the resistance of silence after the interruption of speech,” Bonin observes. The creator of kinetic installations marked by “semiotic complexity,” Tomas was known for his technological innovations (he began to use strobe lights, chronometers, and automatic triggers in the 1980s). He participated in the critical reassessment of the history of photography, as did Jeff Wall and Alan Sekula, while avoiding “statements of intent,” preferring to base his work on fragmentary or performative thought, and he remained silent even “when he was present.”
Details
Language : French and English
Digital Version : PDF, 2.1 Mb
Bibliographical Reference
Vincent Bonin, « David Tomas, La parole et le silence », Ciel variable, no 118, Montréal, 2021, p. 58-65.