Tom Faber
Tom Faber
Composition No.1 (Sea Horse), 2019
Pigment print on Hahnemühle German Etching paper
100 x 96 cm
Edition of 10 + 2AP
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About this Work
Composition No. 1 (Sea Horse) is the first in a series of works from early 2019. This is a collage with digital brushstrokes made by scanning drawings that the artist had left in the open air to degrade. The resulting images of soil allowed for distortive mark-making. By comparing the composition of images to the composition of soil, Faber freeze-frames the point of translation between ‘real’ material and a dreamlike fictional realm.
This is a collage with digital brushstrokes, virtually constructed, in this case starting from scans of paint-marks and detritus and objects from the artist’s studio. This fluid work investigates the passage of time and of decomposition and deconstruction — the breakdown of a central form into its surroundings. Several layers unfold beneath our eyes, creating a peculiar dynamism which is further enhanced by the contrast between the marine hues and semi-transparent forms. Elements interact and enter into this cycle and circulate around the image – from close to distant; under-drawing to fragments of colour. Faber is here envisaging a surrealist and chaotic economy of cut and paste - a system of forms exchanging, metamorphosing, and settling on a ground.
About Tom Faber
Faber’s work focuses on memory, place, and transformation. He produces both videos and digitally printed images, using a blend of techniques from drawing, painting, collage and 3D animation. Faber works with a library of scans, consisting of detritus from his studio and from the ground: paint marks, soil, and drawings. With these materials, he develops a language of distortive mark-making and plays with the possibilities of digital gesture. Converting these sources allows him to explore the assertive, faulty generations of memory, and the resonances of virtual 'world-building’ at a time of environmental damage. Within this framework, he degrades and recycles images. Producing scenes which often have a harmonious surface, these works tend towards the lush escapism of popular animation, but collapse under the effects of weather. Faber’s image-making techniques point towards the natural world, but hover and stall in anxiety and escapism. They find ways of weathering material into a state of erasure, simulating threats to vast and intimate systems.
Education
2017-18 Chelsea College of Arts – Graduate Diploma in Fine Arts (Distinction)
2012-15 University of Cambridge – BA (Hons) History of Art
Awards & Commissions
2019
Winterreise, digital set design for an audio-visual staging of Schubert’s song cycle
Exceptional Graduate Award, Collyer Bristow Gallery (shortlisted)
Glyndebourne Tour Art Competition winner
Residencies
2019
‘United’, UK Young Artists and Platform Nord, Leicester, UK, and Kristiansand, Norway
Kunstnarhuset Messen, Ålvik, Norway
Exhibitions
2019
Quarry, Ionion Centre for the Arts and Culture, Kefalonia (solo show)
Exceptional, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London
2018
SEA(S) 2018, Ionion Centre for The Arts and Culture, Kefalonia
A Manifesto of Ecology, Phoenix Gallery, Athens
Three, HartsLane, London
Offsite, Safe House, London
One, Chelsea College of Arts, London
Snorkel, The Cookhouse, London