GRO presents Will Thoms: Take a Moment, a series of colorful collaged grid paintings that mark a new development in his longtime engagement with grids and found materials. Here Thoms has assembled small multi-media works from freely painted paper scraps, creating rhythmic patterns, nearly musical movements for the eye. Among the bright colors and subtle textures, fractured incomplete newspaper stories appear and disappear. This is a reminder, says Thoms —even for the artist working alone in the studio— of the hum of distant chatter you can’t get away from, the chorus commenting from far away. The show’s title asks visitors to please Take a Moment, to slow down to really look, take time to lose oneself in the work, join the artist’s attentive meditation. Thoms hopes viewers will see something they didn’t expect.
“Maybe that’s the goal of all visual art, to become more present in the moment and enlarge our ability to perceive, be present.” —Will Thoms
