AGO makes ARTnews list of 25 'Defining' 2022 Exhibitions

Expand

Denyse Thomasos (photo courtesy olgakorpergallery.com)

A Denyse Thomasos show organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario has been chosen for a list of this year's 25 "defining" exhibitions by the editors of ARTnews, an American art magazine.

Thomasos, a Trinidadian Canadian artist who grew up in Toronto, was featured in Denyse Thomasos: just beyond. The show will be on view at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon from April 15 to Sept. 4.

Thomasos, who died at 47 in 2012, has been enjoying a renaissance with another show, Odyssey, organized by the Toronto-area McMichael Canadian Art Collection in 2021. It toured to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria earlier this year.

ARTnews said Thomasos was "a surprise star" of the Whitney Biennial, since she did not have a big following during her lifetime in New York, where she was based.

"Things are slightly different in Canada, where her grand abstractions have garnered new interest as under-recognized Black artists from the nation’s past have received second looks," wrote Alex Greenberger.

The show, curated by Renée van der Avoird, Sally Frater and Michelle Jacques, includes large canvases that consider confinement, slavery and diasporas.

"Many of the works in the exhibition had rarely been shown, and if they had, it certainly wasn’t within the context of much of her other art," wrote Greenberger. "Even in a time when supposedly rediscovered artists are constantly invoked to speak to the present, this Thomasos exhibition feels different – that rare and special chance to write a deserving figure into the canon."  

See the full ARTnews list here.