2013

NEW POSTERS UP AT FOUNTAIN GALLERY/ BAR 1261 DUNDAS ST WEST near Dovercourt for April-May
When you dream it is for the most part hard to know that you are dreaming, but when you awake the residue of images and emotions can linger through-out your day. Dream imagery is often thought to be useless, yet it has always been an important measure of my own identity and subconscious primal being.
These particular drawings attempt to make the image a psychic and subconscious entity while still using external reference material combined with drawing from memory or reflexively.
These drawings are meditations somehow on the philosophies of Alan Watts, the ruminations of Terrence Mckenna the brashness of C. Hitchens, the innocence of Henry Darger and the foolishness of youth developing adjunct to information technology. Will technology actually bring us closer to realizing we are one entity or will it reduce us to interest rate paying blathering consumer zombies hovering the earth as a sort of locust plague? The answer is uncertain but the question hopefully is represented within the space of these recent posters.



  

 

  • BIO
  • CV

Tomas Del Balso
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
artlegitimate@gmail.com

Tomas Del Balso is a Canadian artist that has been producing Visual and Audio work intent on integrating dream spaces with reality. Better known for his role in the experimental underground band DDMMYYYY and other musical projects, his intent and practice does translate into the visual with a unique sense of rythm and interplay.Tomas has toured his music throughout Canada, the U.S.A., UK, Europe and Hong Kong and has created artwork for his bands and others in the forms of album covers, posters and merchandise even creating artwork for NBC's Warehouse 13 season 2. His connection between music culture and art continues in many forms one example can be a mural at the DIY venue Death By Audio in Brooklyn, NY where one of America's most interesting underground music scene is developing. Or you can even see the pop-singer Lights perform in front of his Superjoy mural in her music video "Toes" out on Last Gang Records. Tomas uses drawing as a foundation and moves Dreamlike archetypes, symbols and signs between works on paper, textile, walls and even objects such as pizza boxes oranimal skulls.

Tomas spent Oct 2012 in residency at M.Odla gallery in Prague, CZ creating visual works resulting in an exhibition and a concert at the Prague National Gallery Cinema. The exhibition's title NEJKRÁSNĚJŠÍ OTEC ODPADKŮ /
MOST BEAUTIFUL FATHER OF TRASH can be pushed into greater context in the follwing exhibition text written by the curator Danda Deutelbaum,

He said he´s been suffering from demonic nightmares since his childhood. During his stay here, he sometimes talked
about demons that he has been experiencing throughout his life and about drawing as a way of trying to get rid of them.
Thanks to materialization of these distressing emotions we are forced to think about rather uncomfortable themes for
most people, such as death, fear of death, vulnerability, termination, etc., and considering them we get the chance for
comparison.

Tomas transforms his internal ideas into drawings in rather abstract way, not always describing the real context. For ex-
ample – map of Prague can turn into an organic mixture of thoughts concerning how the appearance of the city changes
during millennium.Tomas was born in Toronto, city with parallel and perpendicular streets, that is why he is fascinated by
Prague´s architectonical street situation and its historical value. Using inclusive materials, typical for couple of genera-
tions of contemporary artists, is a reply to anti-consumer trends tending to recycling. Litter turns out to be a product
again. Death turns out to be life.

The first resident at Antonínská 6 showed he´s not scared of confrontation with our landscape nor language. He is trying
widely open to absorb at least a hint of what we can describe as the czech situation. The mixture of informations that a
turist could absorb by penetration into a specific context of just a limited sector of our reality he´s experiencing. Its casual
absorbation and immediate reaction to it is basically primitive and spontaneous at once. He is not trying to give exhaus-
tive study, just to mediate the experience. So this exhibition we can also interpreted as a view and reaction of Tomas Del
Balso to our community and also to each one of us.

 

 


Education:
2006 Ontario College of Art and Design Alumni, Major in Drawing and Painting, B.F.A.


Record:
2013 New Posters, Fountain, Toronto
2012 NEJKRÁSNĚJŠÍ OTEC ODPADKŮ /
MOST BEAUTIFUL FATHER OF TRASH, M.odla Gallery Prague CZ
2012 MagicK Hour Electric Eclectic Fest in Meaford Ontario, august
2012 Mural at Death by Audio, Brooklyn NY
2011 Secret Geometry, Toronto
2010 Alexandra Mackenzie + Tomas Del Balso , Oz Studios (134 Ossington), Toronto
2010 NXNE poster Show, Twist Gallery, Toronto
2010 SUPERJOY Mural, House of Everlasting Joy, Toronto
2010 Cave Mind, 107 Shaw Sreet, Toronto2009 Order/ Chaos, Xpace, Toronto
2009 Line Art Charity Auction, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
2009 The Video Word Made Flesh, 107 Shaw Street, Toronto
2009 Community Trance, Keep 6 Contemporary, Toronto
2009 Halo Halo, Urbanspace Gallery, Toronto
2008 Line Art Charity Auction, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
2008 No Subtitles, Whippersnapper Gallery, Toronto
2008 Poster Show III, Whippersnapper Gallery, Toronto
2008 Free Drawings Newspaper Launch, Xpace, Toronto
2008 Colour is the Keyboard, Whippersnapper Gallery, Toronto
2008 Quick Draw fund raiser, Penticton Art Gallery, Penticton, B.C.
2007 Artist Bloc : The Documentary, Theatre Centre, Toronto
2007 Our Favourite Games, My Hero Gallery, Montreal, Quebec
2006 Give a Little, Magic Pony, Toronto
2006 The OCAD Grad Show, OCAD, Toronto
2006 The Dissenters Club, Xpace, Toronto
2006 Animals you can put in your art, Xpace, Toronto
2005 Cute but Cynical, Xpace, Toronto
2005 The Lost Boys, Xpace, Toronto

DDMMYYYYY Infinite. Read about ddmmyyyy here.


Artist Assistant: Jason Mclean 2009-2011, John Brown 2009


Awards:
2008 Brampton City Council Arts Acclaim, City of Brampton
Artbooks:
Psychic Arts, 202 Page Paperback
XXX, Tomas Del Balso, , May 2010
After 19 Major, Tomas Del Balso, Limited Edition 10 copies, June 2009

Other Publications:
Volume 2009 published by Xpace.Sketch Magazine- Thou Shall Not ArtSpeak-(pg 20), Spring Summer Issue
Cave Mind, Compiled and Screen Printed by Jesjit Gill:  November 2009
Free Drawings series published by Jesjit Gill
Raw Pizza published by Jesjit GillLost Boys Zine series with Dan Rocca, Ryan Solski (2004-)




Freelance Illustration:
NBC's Warehouse 13, Wardrobe Tee-Shirt Art Work for TV Series 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW POSTERS! YOU CAN ORDER SCREENPRINTS!

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TWINMELT 2012 Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Ink on 90lb Archival Paper ($45 Plus S&H)

RAMSKULLORACLE 2013 Black Ink on 90lb Maid-Stone Paper 22x30 ($35 plus S&H)

The Signing 2013 Black Ink on 90lb Maid-Stone Paper 22x30 ($35 plus S&H)

PSYCHIC ARTS by Tomas Del Balso



Support independent publishing: Buy this book on Lulu.

Please Read the essay by Nadja about the drawings inside Psychic Arts here.

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Tomas Del Balso

Dan Rocca

Jason McLean

Ryan Solski

David Waldman

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