Talk

Thomas Houseago’s highly distinctive sculptures are an unexpected yet compelling blend of monumentality and vulnerability. Working with traditional materials like clay, bronze, and carved wood as well as concrete, steel rods and plaster, his sculptures combine a raw and dynamic approach to figuration and abstraction. On the occasion of his forthcoming exhibition, Thomas Houseago: Masks (Pentagon)— a site-specific installation of five giant masks creating a pentagonal area for visitors to enter in the heart of Rockefeller Center Plaza— the artist will present a lecture on his work in the public realm.

Thomas Houseago (b. 1972, Leeds, England) lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include As I Went Out One Morning at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York (2013); Thomas Houseago: Striding Figure/Standing Figure at Galleria Borghese, Rome (2013); Where the Wild Things Are and Thomas Houseago: Hermaphrodite at Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, Norwich (2012); The World Belongs to You at Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2011); The Beat of the Show at Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2011); What Went Down at Modern Art Oxford (2010, traveled to Ashmolean Museum, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, and Centre International d’Art et du Paysage de l’Ile de Vassivière, through 2011); and The Artist’s Museum at MOCA, Los Angeles (2010). Also in 2010, his work was included in the Whitney Biennial as well as Public Art Fund’s group exhibition Statuesque in City Hall Park. He earned his BA from the Central Saint Martins College of Art, London in 1994, and studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam from 1994-1996. Houseago is represented by Gagosian Gallery, Hauser + Wirth, and Xavier Hufkens Gallery.