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Foundations pairs new works by Detroit artists Zach Thompson and Emma Kinnison, whose distinct practices find common ground through abstraction.
Thompson’s expressive paintings and Kinnison’s steel sculptures each explore movement, color, and emotion, revealing how gesture can transcend medium. Together, their works create a dynamic conversation between surface and structure.
Where color, gesture, and form converge. Kinnison and Thompson’s work both convey dynamic gestures in their chosen medium, demonstrating effortless energy and intuitive flow. – Paulina Petkoski, Curator
Explore the fair exclusively on Artsy from August 3 through August 21st.
Though they work in different mediums, Emma Kinnison and Zach Thompson and share an intuitive approach to abstraction that transforms material into movement.
Kinnison approaches abstraction through fabricated steel, reshaping an industrial material into fluid, organic forms. Her sculptures explore movement, rhythm, and transformation, while bold hand-applied color amplifies each work’s distinct energy and presence.
Thompson, a Detroit-based self-taught painter, creates expressive compositions using acrylic, oil pastel, and palette knives to explore themes of individualism, morality, and humanity. His energetic gestures and layered surfaces evoke emotion through color and mark-making.
Together, their practices reveal abstraction as a shared visual language. Painting and sculpture respond to one another through gesture, rhythm, and color, inviting viewers to consider how contemporary artists can express movement, emotion, and identity across two fundamentally different mediums.
ON VIEW THROUGH AUGUST 21 ON ARTSY
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Emma Kinnison is a Detroit-based sculptor working with steel, creating contemporary pieces that explore movement, emotion, and organic forms, designed to function as a statement element within interior spaces. Her new series explores movement, form, and rhythm.
Her artistic practice centers around the transformation of a material primarily considered rigid and industrial into something that feels fluid, expressive, and alive.
Zach Thompson is a Detroit-based, self-taught contemporary painter known for his expressive works that explore themes of individualism, morale, and humanity.
A mixture of acrylic paints, oil pastels, and palette knives are used in the creation of each painting as well as traditional brushes.
