Thomas Houseago
Standing Tall

Houseago’s work draws on a wide range of references, from Antiquity to Rodin, Brancusi, Giacometti, and Picasso, while also engaging with figures from popular culture, from David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust to George Lucas’s Darth Vader. His practice is defined by processes of deconstruction and recombination, multiplying cultural references as well as materials, viewpoints, scales, and dimensions. Through this layered approach, Houseago addresses the persistence of humanity within a fragmented, technocratic, and conflicted world.

His sculptures often combine flat wooden elements with fully rounded forms, alongside hand-drawn components that are cast or printed onto the surface of the work in a striking technical tour de force. By mixing traditional sculptural materials—wood, plaster, and bronze—with industrial elements such as iron rods and hemp, Houseago creates monumental works that openly reveal their process of making. Frequently incomplete, broken, or hollow, his figures and masks convey both vulnerability and resistance. Their scale allows them to shape and activate space, engaging the viewer directly, while their fragility lends them emotional and existential depth.

These works resonate with the condition described by philosopher Donna Haraway in A Cyborg Manifesto: “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.”

The exhibition highlights the breadth of Houseago’s sculptural language, showcasing gestures such as carving, molding, and casting, as well as his versatility across materials including bronze, aluminum, and plaster.