ABOUT THE EXHIBITION 

Thomas Cummins’ large format, backlit photographs capture unpopulated urban settings, disclosing how individuals relate to—and define themselves by—the built environments that they inhabit and the social structures associated with said spaces. For his exhibition at Sala Diaz, Cummins revisits the places that influenced his youth, specifically his former kindergarten, elementary and middle schools. In doing so, he creates multilayered self-portraits of an adult gazing at the places that define his formative years.

Curated by Hills Snyder

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Thomas Cummins is an artist based out of his hometown of San Antonio, Texas. While photography is traditionally limited to a maximum of a 120-degree field of vision, Cummins often circumvents this constraint by utilizing contiguous triptychs to maintain an immersive 360-degree experience, mimicking the means by which architectural structures surround us in the world at large.

Thomas studied at University of Texas at Austin, Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine; Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, England; and the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. He has attended over a dozen residencies including Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York; the Baie Sainte-Marie Residency, New Edinburgh, Nova Scotia, Canada; and the National Center for Contemporary Art in Kronstadt, St. Petersburg, Russia. In addition, he has received grants and fellowships from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio, Artpace, The Cultural Collaborative, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Cy Twombly Foundation. This fall, he will be an artist-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany, part of a collaborative arrangement between Künstlerhaus and Blue Star Contemporary Arts Museum.

http://ThomasCummins.com

Image: Elementary, (2015); photographic transparency in backlit lightbox; 50 x 26 inches

PRESS

The Rivard Report   http://therivardreport.com/looking-at-light-within-darkness-the-light-box-photography-of-thomas-cummins/

San Antonio Current http://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/thomas-cummins/Event?oid=2479151