Unchained.Art Contemporary Gallery presents Tom Hoitsma: Sculptural Thinking in Paint, a solo exhibition introducing ‘The Unknowable World’. A new body of work in which Hoitsma extends the structural intelligence of his sculptural practice, where form loosens and gesture becomes a carrier of memory and motion.
Hoitsma’s work is rooted in lived experience. In 2019, a tornado tore through his Dallas neighborhood, reducing homes to debris and reshaping the physical and emotional environment. The metal wall sculptures that followed, many constructed from neighborhood remnants, emerged as responses to chaos, reconstruction, human resilience, and an innate instinct to rebuild. This inquiry expanded into painting, where structure gives way to bloom, flow, and movement.
‘The Unknowable World’ traces an evolution where sculptural thinking remains the foundation, while painting becomes the primary site of exploration. Resilience emerges not as a fixed outcome, but as an ongoing process shaped by memory, material, and transformation.
Underlying this shift is the idea that nature is never experienced universally but filtered through individual reality and memory – an internal landscape that Hoitsma now translates through paint.
‘Each of us filters nature through our own experience,’ Hoitsma says. ‘That idea has become central to my work, shaping how resilience and renewal take form across both sculpture and painting.’
While distinct in material and gesture, the paintings and sculptures operate as two expressions of the same visual logic. Angular tension and structural balance in the metal works find their counterpart in the layered movement and release of paint. Nature is not treated as ornament or motif, but as an active force – persistent, unpredictable, impossible to contain.
Hoitsma work is presented at a moment of expansion. Rooted in material exploration, the works balance conceptual rigor with strong visual presence, offering a practice that remains grounded while allowing form to evolve.
