Thom Trojanowski
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In scale slightly smaller than average, Trojanowski’s figure is positioned in a sinking repose: not idle but deeply connected through his soft pillowed weight. Detailed ceramic hands and feet have anatomical vitality, accentuated by a grey speckled glaze that settles around the tendons, contrasting with earthy brown nails. His ceramic face, fungus-frilled around the edges, houses real wildflowers. This man of soil is in contemplation as he raises his face to the sky and tree canopy.
Trojanowski has consistently returned to the forest as a site of exploration and metaphor -whether Tunstall Forest near Suffolk or Hoge Kempen outside Genk, Belgium where he now lives. A personal champion of the Japanese custom of forest-bathing and its positive effects on mental health and well-being this work references and instantiates the architecture of a glade as a psychological space to embattle the leaden mood of cold urban austerity and to use the power of memory and emotion to rekindle one’s relationship to the earth.
With its tied and stuffed puppet-like construction the limbs can be positioned variably in the space. The wildflower is tended with rainwater.
Exhibitions
Glade, Brooke Benington, London (2023)
