04 Feb LosOtros | Upcoming Solo Show | Paris
After spending a period of silence Mj Tom of the Artistic Cooperativa LosOtros returns to Paris, to present his new work, under the title “Limbus Op. 1” the first of a series as indicates the numbering, showcasing a completely new body of work, in Espace Christianne Peugeot, February 21th until March 4th.
“Limbus” consists of a series of artworks in very large formats, in Black and White, with a minimal approach and a strong dialogue with the space. They say a lot by saying nothing. Just Looks or Gazes. And through these gazes, they unfold stories.
Focusing constantly on what lies beyond the limits of everyday life, Mj Tom burden himself with the faction of humans that intentionally [?] chosen [?] to lie outside of what is considered socially conventional. And by spotlighting on the humans that are overlooked or deliberately neglected, Mj Tom takes on the process of investigating these Inlands.
Questing and studying that which goes unnoticed, he blurs the lines between documentation and participation, inserting himself in these universes. In so doing, Mj Tom takes on some of their secrecy as well. The result is an ability to subtly bring out the mysterious elegance of these people and spaces that are so often neglected or prudently rejected.
This exploration of these underworld elements that exist in every city and every country reveals a certain universality that is present throughout the work, counterbalanced by the intimacy that Mj Tom conveys in the way that he treats his subject matter.
The result is a complex and often open-ended social critique… an ‘Open Language’… a silent, sensitive poetry that working against the saturation… the overburdening of messages and signals that we are subject to… within everyday life. Through a spontaneous, respectful practice, he attempts to make ‘a place for free thinking’… a ‘space of dead time’… using a language which is ‘infinite, abstract’, and thus ‘universal’.
As he quotes “Limbus is not a show, or a solo show.. It ll be, at the end, a serie of statements in the form of question. I return to the gallery space to question. Question the space itself. Question the rules. Question the white cube. Question the canvas and acrylic. Question what is important and what it is not. Question the way of seeing things and making artworks. Question the politically correct. Question the figurative. Question the idea of urban art. And above all to question myself. Why Question? To leave the comfort zone. To not create artworks that please or conform to the modern world.”
Almost a campaign against Youth and Beauty Culture and what it convey it, to the collective unconscious.
About the Artist
European Visual Artist Mj Tom chooses not to share any personal information. Since 2000 he established the Visual Poetry | Urban Art Group LosOtros with his alter ego Andrea Nada. Seeing that, he lived between Berlin, Barcelona and Paris. His work has been exhibited at London, Paris, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Dubai.
His current body of work includes mixed media, collage, sculture, installation, and digital printing. Irreverent and fleeting, able to define himself as a copy machine of art, sarcastic and deliberately anonymous, he questions almost every probable fact. The veneer of normality, the history as written, the common way of understanding nature and oneself as a part of it.
As he remarks “LosOtros is not an Artist or a group of Artists… LosOtros is a state of mind that engages a number of persons.. Not only those that create the Art Works, but also those that they try to understand them… We believe that Art is not important because there´s an artist behind, but because there is a viewer in front. The meaning behind an Art Work is the meaning that the viewer build around it. The artist explanation has a very limited value. We don´t want to promote any manifest, nor to convince nobody about anything… We are not in Art to promote ourselves… Art is simply our lifestyle.”.
Mj Tom lives and works in Miami, FL, USA.
21.02.2018 – 04.03.2018
Espace Christiane Peugeot
62 Avenue de la Grande-Armée
75017 Paris
France