Jesper List Thomsen
Jesper List Thomsen’s practice begins in language, traverses the body, and ends in painting.
Considering how subjectivity and the human body are shaped by digital and patriarchal conditioning, List Thomsen mobilises a language through which the body is given over to utterance and broken down. Working with a method of accumulation, he collects language by moving through a geographical location, intensely studying an artwork, or rereading an author persistently. His paintings arrive after these writing events, and are composed from a variety of materials. Marker-pen, tape, stencils, PVC, digital print and paint each perform a distinct mark, one that is continuously situated in a relationship to the body, both in scale and as a subject of ongoing depiction. Over time, List Thomsen dismantles and rearranges these works through a process of layering and delayering, whereby a painterly composition is erased, painted over, ripped away, to re-emerge. He performs his writing within the context of the paintings, as live readings and sonic works. In deploying text, reading-groups, performance, and painting — or language, discourse, body, and image – List Thomsen activates the potential in a certain multiplicity, engaging with and passing through the representational tissue of our cultural and political present.
After working within the artist and curatorial collective Am Nuden Da from 2008, he has been practicing solo since 2015.
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Past Presentations
2024 – New Pictrues From Milano Centrale, Hot Wheels London, London, UK (solo)
2024 – Avoiding The Genius / Blackbirds, Grazer Kunstverein, AT (performance)
2022 – Deep Publishing, an exhibition by Åbäke, Museum Macro, Rome, IT (performance)
2022 – Performance Assembly, curated by Ory Dessau, West Museumkwartier, Den Haag, NL (performance)
2021 – Facing the Crowd, curated by Ory Dessau, West Museumkwartier, Den Haag, NL (group)
2021 – FREEEee, BRAUNSFELDER, Cologne, DE (solo)
2020 – Parrhesiades: Volume 1, Radio Athenes, Athens, GR (reading event)
2019 – Standard Count, Hot Wheels Athens, Athens, GR (solo)
2019 – FROM TACITURN TO BUFF, Parrhesiades/South London Gallery, London, UK (solo)
2019 – BASE BASE etc., Hot Wheels Projects, Athens, GR (solo)
2019 – Blackbirds reading at BASE BASE etc., Hot Wheels Projects, Athens, GR (reading event)
Publications
2021 – FREEEee, L’Esprit de l’Escalier, London/Helsinki, UK/FI (monograph)
2021 – Intertitles, Prototype Publishing, London, UK
2020 – Parrhesiades: Volume 1, Parrhesiades, London, UK
2020 – Transparent Things, Goldsmiths CCA, London, UK
2018 – BASE BASE, Juan de la Cosa/John of the Thing, Mexico City/London, MEX/UK(monograph)
2017 – Marie Lund: SCOUT, MIDI/Mousse, Milan, IT
2015 – MATERIAL, issue 4, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2014 – Cadavere Quotidiano, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2011 – Notes and Projects, VERSUCH, London, UK