Michael Thompson

Michael Thompson

BornNationalityBased In
1997CanadianToronto
Biography

Michael Thompson (b. 1997, London, Ontario) is a painter living and working in Toronto. Thompson’s paintings connect the evolution of the image — from early darkroom photography through contemporary digital imaging — to the shifting labour conditions across the 20th and 21st century. Rooted in Thompson’s experience at Ford Motor Company where his father and two grandfathers worked before him, he paints from found images wrought with a nostalgic yearning for the handmade and the aesthetics of manual labour more broadly. Thompson positions this nostalgia as an ever-present condition of the alienated worker, now further disconnected from their efforts through the increasing implementation of automation and artificial intelligence in the workplace. Working within a compositional structure that often references the filmstrip, Thompson explores imagistic analogues for the shifting conditions of the image in modernity, a focus which has seen the artist reference iconic American imagery of the Space Race and the figure of Elvis Presley. Thompson’s painted subjects are fractured and stuck between images of a recent past that can never be relived and the inexhaustible drive toward efficient, productive workplaces aided by the latest technologies. In 2019, Thompson completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Western University and became a resident artist at the Slade School of Fine Art in partnership with Camden Art Centre (London). In 2022, he received a Master of Fine Art from the University of Guelph. The artist has been included in exhibitions in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. His first solo exhibition, Chorus Coda, opened at Franz Kaka (Toronto) in 2023. Thompson is included in Greater Toronto Art 2024 at MOCA, Toronto, the artist’s first institutional presentation. ...

Selected Artworks
Split Tongue
Michael Thompson
Split Tongue, 2024
30.48 x 15.24cm
Fastening Fashion
Michael Thompson
Fastening Fashion, 2024
20.32 x 25.4cm
Sling Stature
Michael Thompson
Sling Stature, 2024
182.9 x 121.9cm
Worried, Winged, Waiting
Michael Thompson
Worried, Winged, Waiting, 2024
121.9 x 91.4cm
In Your Parasol, In Your Parasol, In Your Parasol
Michael Thompson
In Your Parasol, In Your Parasol, In Your Parasol, 2024
101.6 x 30.5cm
Sharp
Michael Thompson
Sharp, 2024
121.9 x 121.9cm
Curtain Call Callback
Michael Thompson
Curtain Call Callback, 2024
121.9 x 121.9cm
Hand Holding
Michael Thompson
Hand Holding, 2024
61 x 121.9cm
Gallery Representation
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