Tommy Coleman

The stage is set, and the pieces are in place, now all that is left is to watch and wait. Tommy Coleman’s study on reality entitled Performance Anxiety relies on tools and devices more common to the stage than the gallery. Coleman’s sculptures explore the degradation and disintegration of objecthood--the transitional phase when an object is recognizable but is no longer suitable for its intended utilitarian purpose.

These recognizable set pieces are all asked to perform their roles but Coleman, as creator, has given none of these objects the required attributes or structure to succeed in their functional task. Coleman relies on unexpected material choices to pervert the role that each object is evocative of- a table laden with gum is splayed in exhaustion, unable to fulfill its original purpose, bananas have gathered together as a viable construction material and thus both objects re-write their role in this installation.

In Coleman’s constructions, the audience recognizes the objects but is unable to reconcile the disconnect between expected purpose and their abstraction, which lends each sculpture the suggestion of an independent life existing beyond the creator or viewer. The narrative of the object exists in the discord between expectation and performance.

Performance Anxiety is a tribute to the realization that perverting the identity of an object can re-contextualize the life of the object entirely.