Obut (Indiana)

Born in 1961 in New Orleans, Louisiana (USA), Blair Thurman lives and works in New York. 

Blair Thurman creates multi-dimensional paintings that recall the pleasures of the road or the big screen of our youth. His influences range from pop art to minimalism, popular music, 70’s cinema and his childhood memories. Standardized figures from small race car tracks, architectural settings and compositions from everyday life take on a nostalgic quality. The artist probes the intersection between our cultural environment and our fantasies, examining the memory and poetry embedded in the very act of looking and offering us a work that goes beyond the field of art history, which he inscribes in a broader cultural history, at the crossroads of cinema, literature and industrial design.

He received his B.F.A. from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Canada, and his M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Blair Thurman’s work has been exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions. Recent solo museum exhibitions include, among others, FRAC Normandie Caen (2022), Le Magasin-Centre National d’Art Contemporain, France (2014) ; Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma, USA (2015). Thurman’s work is listed in several permanent collections, including the Centre national des arts plastique, Paris ; Le Consortium, Dijon ; Fonds régional d’art contemporain, France ; and the Syz Collection, Switzerland. Thurman’s work was included in the 46th Biennale di Venezia in 1995.