A Life with so many Images – Kristof Thomas

Sunbathing meringues, foamy polystyrene clouds, multiplied oranges or pickles sculptures ; here are some of the visual sugar highs awaiting you in the artist book Apparatus of Joy by Kristof Thomas. Summoning the sheer and childish pleasure of making and manipulating images, the artist allows us to recompose them through a skillful game of cut-outs, offering multiple associations left for us to unfold.

The title recalls the visual tricks used in advertising to sell us fake and standardized visions of happiness and fulfillment : saturated colors, photoshop manipulation, staged setting. However, the images composed by Kristof Thomas are publicity for nothing but themselves, a promotion of the pure joy brought by color, texture and shape. 

To produce these absurdly colorful still lifes, Kristof Thomas absorbs and digest images. A kaleidoscopic process made of three dimensional collages, precarious assemblages of motley objects in the studio, reframing and digital post-production. The results are liquid images, bound to be cut out again and photoshopped, whether used as a background for a new staging or scattered as fragments in dripping compositions, before being deconstructed again. 

Kristof Thomas produces a visual multiverse in which each image could potentially give rise to a thousand ones – and they probably will.