Streets: Thomas Canto – “Gravitational Inertia Infinity”

Recently in Shenzhen, China, Thomas Canto installed a reflective sculpture on top of a private building entitled Gravitational Inertia Infinity. The piece is the first in a new series of works that the French artist plans to explore in the coming months and continues his play with depth, geometry and illusion. Mirroring some of the star-like installations he has created indoors, Canto is taking his work full circle by heading outdoors back to the urban environment, hoping to start a dialogue between nature, human and architecture.

Thomas Canto was sensitized to art at an early age by his entourage. His work is eclectic and abstract, resolutely turned to a futuristic aesthetic. In 1990, he painted his first works, inspired by abstract masters like Moholy-Nagy. Self-taught, he tries different techniques, such as oil painting or photographic tools to create his identity. Confronted with his taste for abstraction by the study of the constructivist and futuristic currents, Thomas Canto obsessively digs the subjects of the representation of speed and perspective that are found in all his compositions. He began to exhibit his work from 2001 onwards. In 2005 he had his first solo show, where he was able to initiate work in situ and to deepen his work on the notion of space through immersive installations.

In 2013, he participated in the artistic project “Bains Douches”. The freedom of expression he finds in this new environment suggests to him the total appropriation of a place and its space. It is at this moment that he defines the concept that will structure all his future productions: the relation of the Human to the Architecture. His curiosity for the technique goes as far as the works of the architects Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel or Oscar Niemeyer. Since 2014, he specializes in high-precision geometric creation, whose explosive movement exudes a deep tension.

He decides to include his paintings in volumes of acrylic glass that he invests as so many windows open on his work. Pursuing his appropriation of matter, light and especially the shadows that it projects, he gradually adds interlaced nylon to his “cubicles” of Plexiglas. The product of this multidimensional experimentation was presented in Geneva during his exhibition “Transparent Landscapes”. He also exhibited several installations in the former Customs of Rome (Italy), Bund  18 of Shanghai (China) as part of the exhibition “Look Through”, in the Biennale of Volklingen (2015) and in the Centre Pompidou Paris (2016), as well as at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Mohammed VI in Rabat (Morocco).

In his exhibition “Still Lifes Of Spacetime”, Rome (Italy), Thomas Canto presented for the first time a staging of videomapping, a promising new tool. His installation was criticized by the critic Achille Bonito Oliva who wrote the manifesto of the event. In 2016, he produced works that foreshadowed his evolution towards a work of sculpture more and more prevalent. More recently, light and optics have become the core of Thomas Canto’s work. The exhibition “Gravitational Transparencies” presented at Matthew Liu Fine Arts space (Shanghai) reflected the many possibilities offered by the play of light reflections and the resulting impressions of infinity. He will continue his researches on transparency with the installation “Illusory Perspectives” presented at the Centre Pompidou for the 40th anniversary of the museum.