“Call of the Light(The Call of the Light) is a modest but illuminating exhibition that traces the expansive work of Mildred Thompson (1936-2003), an African-American feminist artist whose eclectic practice anticipates queer formalism. Thompson’s work was shaped by his self-imposed exile (including a brief stay in Paris in the 1980s), which expanded the artist’s research into scientific concepts such as quantum physics and cosmology, fields that were to influence his creative output over the next twenty years. The title of the exhibition derives from one of the two yellowish oil pastels from 1982. Produced in Paris, they mark a detour from his earlier work and set the tone for the different series presented.
Thompson primarily sought refuge in Europe after his encounters with racism and sexism in New York in the early 1960s, but the artist avoided making direct political statements in his work, preferring to focus on the metaphysical complexities of life. universe and the concepts of emancipatory space. It was in Paris that the artist began experimenting with cosmic imagery, a theme evident in works such as Pleiades I, 1988, a watercolor of the star cluster dancing in symmetry. Two later paintings Advancing Impulses1997, and Radiation explorations 8, 1994, depict interstellar life with impasto swirls and stormy lines, each bursting with motion and color. While Zylo Probe, California. 1975, from his relief series “Wood Pictures”, predates his Parisian years, its rhythmic compositional structure in natural wood tones highlights his sometimes unclassifiable output. Together, the works ofCall of the Lightsuccessfully demonstrates how invisible forces can materialize, revealing the magical interrelationships of aesthetics and science.
