The Dream Stuff

Thomas Hicks, LA Bank Galerie (2007)
Curated by Charlotte Léouzon

Drawer, painter and author of highly charged animation films, Thomas Hicks distills, through a singular and retro style, an infinite spectrum of fantasies and enigmas.The line is black, sensual and sombre. The material is thick, the canvas perforated, taped, the masked faces are sacrificed, the umbrellas are knives, the characters float in a shattered world. The canvasses, with voiceless and cavernous evocations, contrast with his lighter drawings, which serve as a basis for his animation films.

The neurotical animation by Thomas Hicks is an assemblage of shots, jittery and busy, go by in a mad hurry, with ghostly characters in the middle of worrying organic machines. Self-evidently akin to automatic writing, which denies all chance of grasping the narrative thread. Hicks’ not looking for coherence in his scripts, but to distil a worrying foreign flavour …kind of British, a bit crazy.