Daniel Cooney Fine Art is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition of Polaroid and large-scale color photographs by New York City based artist Gail Thacker titled Between the Sun and the Moon. The show will consist of approximately 40 photographs made over the past three decades, all involving manipulation of the Polaroid format.
Thacker has been producing photographs for almost 40 years and belongs to the renowned group of artists informally known as The Boston School. Members of The Boston School studied and met one another in Boston during the 1970’s and migrated to New York circa late 70’s - early 80’s. Specifically, Thacker attended the Boston School of the Museum of Fine Arts from 1978 to 1981 with her immediate circle: Mark Morrisroe, Pat Hearn and Steven Stain.
In addition to the Polaroid process Thacker has used analog photography, painting, film and performance in her artistic practice. In 1988 her friend Mark Morrisroe, gravely ill from AIDS, gave her the Polaroid 665 film from his refrigerator and asked her to use it. This was a turning point in Thacker’s artistic practice as it allowed her to work with a negative that could be manipulated and printed.
Each of Thacker’s photographs require individual attention, the way one might address a painting. Some prints are marked upon, others are torn and taped or collaged. Each print has it’s own identity, it’s unique color, it’s personal decay and fragments of time passed. Between the Sun & the Moon is a gathering of moments that make the artist’s life. It is a love affair with the people that have crossed her path, some for minutes, others for decades, many gone and some still present. Consistent in her work is the city of New York, her destination when she left Boston in 1981 and the place she still calls home.
Thacker’s work is included in public and private collections such as: The Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, NYC; The Polaroid Collection, MA; FotoMuseum, Switzerland; CGAC, Spain; The Hadley Martin Fisher Collection, FL; Lenox Hill Hospital, NYC; The City University of New York; and The New York Public Library.
She has been featured in publications such as: The Polaroid Book (Taschen Books); There Was a Sense of Family: The Friends of Mark Morrisroe (Moderne KunstNürnberg); Mark Dirt (Paper Chase Press); and Tabboo! The Art of Stephen Tashjian (D.A.P.). Thacker has also appeared in The Daily News, The New York Press, The New Yorker, Frontiers Journal of Women Studies, Providence Town Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times.