Sarah Thibault

 

 

 

 

My work seeks to invoke the viewer’s memories of common experiences, familiar places or shared rituals.  The result is often mixed in with clichés reflecting the mid-western values I grew up with. I take my source material from Google image searches, choosing key words that are as vague as possible like “landscape” or “hotel room” to seek out the populist definition as defined by the collective consciousness on the web, a Jungian visual dictionary of sorts.  I mix these images with my own accumulated memories, images from fashion magazines, art history and advertisements- essentially the visual landscape that surrounds and informs me on a daily basis.

I use my art practice as a critique as much as an exploration of these values and ideas.  I think of myself as a tourist, a conscientious one, that travels through these imagined spaces questioning the conventions and the role they fit in Western culture- honeymoon suites, hotel rooms, museums, collector’s homes, romantic landscapes.  Painting is a way for me to combine these spaces and ideas that exist in our visual consciousness and distill them into images. The skewed perspective and flatness represent the variety of sources and the challenge of believing in an image, place, or idea as absolute or real.

Sarah Thibault was born in Minneapolis, MN. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2006 and has lived and worked in New York since. In addition to making work, Sarah serves as the Director of Visual Arts for a gallery space in Brooklyn, Gallery 910. Her work has been exhibited in Brooklyn, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco and Paris, France.

 

"Collector's home 3," 42" x 45," painting on canvas, 2006, below;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An excerpt from a review of "Untitled 6" at the Soo Visual Arts Center in Minneapolis, MN:

"I can’t write about all 20 of the artists in the show, but the standouts – Joe Sinness, Mason Eubanks, Audrey Bernard, Sarah Thibault, Garrett Perry, Jonas Lindberg, and Katherine Redford—all present work that has good reasons to ask for your engagement. The pieces cover the ground between their intention and your location; they don’t assume virtues that they don’t perform...

Sarah Thibault’s work here depicts “the homes of the collectors.” After a couple of decades in which collectors have been at least as influential in the artworld as artists or critics—think of Saatchi!—this bit of wit is more than pointed. And the cubistic treatment of these “homes”, so like David Hockney’s early work, and even reminiscent of Saul Steinberg’s cartoons, sharpens the joke, makes it formal, and spreads its commentary beyond the current moment. They're also really handsome paintings. "

- Ann Klefstad, www.MNArtists.org; June 18, 2007.