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October 4, 2011 – Review
Tom Molloy’s "Doubt"
Aoife Rosenmeyer
Tom Molloy has been making pencil drawings for years, whose subjects are taken from photographs in the newspapers, pornography or official pictures of Texans executed under the death penalty. His style is painstakingly photorealist, though he refrains from the luxurious darkness of B pencils, keeping the images light and impassive, crosshatching rather than letting lines be loose and expressive. He smudges their edges in an abrasive act—perhaps to engender some dissonance in the reception of the overly-familiar images.
In this show at the Rubicon Gallery, however, his drawings are largely absent. The startling image on the invitation entitled Doubt (2010)—a meticulously drawn outstretched hand with its index finger weirdly truncated—is mysteriously missing from the exhibition. The image undoubtedly references Doubting Thomas’s need to put his finger in the wound of Jesus, in an act which sounds only pragmatic, but which, in the biblical context, accounts for his lack of faith. Molloy’s employment of the image, however, also suggests missing evidence, as if his finger had been excised: we are left with a dumb question and perhaps a joke at our expense.
Instead of traditional drawings, the gallery is dominated by Subplot (2008), a work seen earlier in the year at the Sharjah …