Rima's Wall
Charcoal and chalk on paper
8 panels 180 x 110 cm each (880 cm total), 1991-92.

The Cloak of Mercury
Pastel on paper, 150 x 124 cm, 1991.

The Fort Worth Modern Art Museum's downtown annex, best known as the Modern at Sundance Square, is a spacious single-room gallery that currently is hosting 19 works by Tom Phillips in the exhibition "Drawing on Music."

The exhibition has been mounted in conjunction with the Van Cliburn International Piano Competion, taking place just a few blocks away at Bass Hall.

The exhibition's centerpiece is Rima's Wall, a year-long drawing that began as one panel and ended as eight. It has not been publically exhibited since Yale University's 1994 retrospective of Tom's work at the Center for British Art. It has also been exhibited at Galerie Reckermann, Cologne, and the Royal Academy, London.

For more information about Rima's Wall, click here.

To the right of Rima's Wall, on a wall recessed a bit and painted a light green, is the large drawing The Cloak of Mercury. This work is typically counted among the "Language Drawings," and takes its title from classical mythology.

It was Mercury who gave mankind the gift of writing. He delivered the letters of the alphabet in a craneskin bag. The Cloak of Mercury depicts matrices from which all letters of the alphabet can be derived.

For more information about The Cloak of Mercury, click here.

In the third photograph above, attention has shifted from The Cloak of Mercury to Heldentenor. To see what all the fuss is about, continue your virtual tour by looking TO YOUR RIGHT.  > >

Web-Only Exhibition Notes,  Fort Worth 2001

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