The Artists That Inspire Thomas Kane
In addition to his work as a private wealth manager, Thomas Kane is an avid art collector and supporter of visual artists.
He has always believed that a flourishing artistic community is essential to a healthy community. That has become especially important in the wake of the pandemic, which has disproportionately affected artists and musicians, who have largely been unable to make money from their work during a time of social distancing and quarantines.
To promote the support of artists in Chicago and everywhere else, Thomas has named some of his favorite artists, whose work he greatly admires.
You can explore the work of these artists on their websites, which are provided below. Or maybe you’ll be inspired to make your own list, and share it on social media.
Whether we directly support artists financially, or simply share their work on social media, we can all help uplift the artists that make our society — and our daily lives — a little brighter.
Los Angeles-based artist Beverly Fishman creates provocative, electric-hued objects that address the “pharmaceutical industry, confront physical and mental health, and nod to California’s modern art roots,” according to a recent article in Wallpaper.com.
“Fishman is best known for multidisciplinary work exploring technological, scientific and biological systems of perception and representation,” the article said. “She seeks to provoke constructive conversations about the complexities in the medical industry, and how individuals perceive their physical and mental health, and fashion their identities.”
Fishman’s latest exhibition, titled “Love Letter to LA,” explores the marketing of pharmaceuticals during a time when so many of us are increasingly medicated.
A British artist born in 1956, the work of Ann Veronica Janssens adopts the idioms of science and minimalism. The art of Janssens, who now lives and works in Belgium, “suggests that all perception is fragile at best,” according to KamelMennour.com, the website for a gallery showcasing her work.
Janssens creates installations, projections, immersive environments, urban interventions, and sculptures. She explores “the sensory experience of reality. Space, distribution of light, radiant color, and translucent or reflective surfaces all serve to reveal the instability of our perception of time and space,” according to the website “She explores properties of matter (gloss, lightness, transparency, fluidity) and physical phenomena (reflection, refraction, perspective, balance, waves) in order to destabilize ideas about materiality.”
A French artist born in 1926, Jacques Villegle is now 95 years old and somewhat of a legend, whose work is currently featured in the MoMA, or Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Jacques Villeglé is “best known for his torn collaged works made from posters and advertisements,” according to ArtNet.com.
The art of Villeglé explored the realm of pop cultural references decades before that was normalized by the Internet. His work is “representative of an obscured sense of cultural reference and the deterioration of civilization, with his densely layered surfaces suggesting social and political critiques through their appropriated imagery,” ArtNet.com wrote.
Zipora Fried is an Israeli artist who studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna.
Her work ranges from surrealist depictions of a moody night sky, to abstract expressionist works like a table covered in bottles or an armoire pierced by hundreds of knives.
According to Sikkema Jenkins & Co., the gallery currently showcasing Fried’s artwork, her art “moves fluidly between drawing, sculpture, and photography, often synthesizing different types of media in one work, and presenting discrete bodies of work together in unexpected ways. Her work meditates on the relationship between the surface presence and the subconscious, and the potential of the artist’s hand to create and negate shape and form.”