A museum preparator’s job informs his choice of media and method

Museum directors enable. Curators select and mix. But it is the job of the preparator to make the exhibition as effective (and affective) as possible.

Marc Thomas is the chief preparator for the Honolulu Museum of Art, making him ultimately responsible for presenting the work to the audience, a job that connects curators, artists, audiences, the artworks themselves, and by extension, collectors, patrons, academics and critics.

Thomas is also a University of Hawaii-trained, award-winning painter. Many viewers will be familiar with his work from several years of "Artists of Hawaii" and Japanese Chamber of Commerce shows.

The paintings in "Work Space," his exhibit at SPF Project, are not a radical departure from his large-scale work, stratified fields of minimized but carefully selected color and deeply detailed surfaces of wear, erosion, spatter and use.

However, by integrating the processes, materials and aesthetics of his job — through sculpture in particular — Thomas is exploring a new conceptual level of his work. For example, in SPF’s lower gallery sits "Module," a mobile flat file designed to survive the harsh environment of shipping containers and airplane holds.

Radiating an aura of efficient functionality, the colors and textures of the wood, tape and foam core are unified by the same disciplined craftsmanship that goes into making furniture or clothing. It is beautiful in its abstraction, and it looks like a ventilation system or the magazine for some giant robot’s sci-fi weapon.

For those who need help grasping the applied aesthetics of crating, "Binder" is a set of 4-by-6-inch photographs that opens the viewer to the implied art of protecting art.

In "Binder," Thomas has documented dozens of crates, treating each as a sculpture. Thomas is not only responsible for managing the mounting of exhibitions, but he also packs and unpacks works coming from or going to the museum’s storage facilities, prepares pieces in the collection for shipping elsewhere, and handles works that come to the museum on loan.

Pure-white foam blocks and cardboard sheets. Fresh pine panels. Bright screws and brackets. Stenciled numbers indicating unpacking sequences. Immediate instructions and directional indicators in neat black Sharpie. Arrows and straps. Blue painter’s tape. All of these elements are combined for entirely functional reasons, balancing volumes of bulk and absence that say nothing of the painting, sculpture or print they protect but are nevertheless custom-built to fit.

Each work in the show expresses a philosophy that he relates to telling the truth about the materials and their manipulation. An untitled piece on the second floor is built from reclaimed shipping crates, blue painter’s tape, paper and grime. This doesn’t sound impressive at the level of ingredients, but the formality of Thomas’ grid creates contrasts with his rich and detailed discourse of wrinkles, smudges and gaps that reveal the wood beneath. An X-ray of product and process, punctuated by short lengths of blue tape, produces an energetic circulating effect that those familiar with his work will immediately recognize.

The materials are barely recontextualized in these 3-D collages. The dropcloths, repurposed (and hand-stitched) canvasses, patterns of spatter, drip and accumulating layers of simple black are presented "as is," expressed through a language he has engineered from the experiences of his professional responsibilities. His paintings are, broadly speaking, like his shipping crates turned inside out and flattened.

And though this practice is highly self-reflective (and therefore highly contemporary), it is free of irony or tongue-in-cheek attitude. "Work Space" feels like a genuine exploration of materials and indicates a new direction for Thomas.

Significantly, it also resonates with similar explorations of "as-is" materials by Oahu’s Lawrence Seward and Hawaii island’s "Les Filter Feeders" (Sally Lundburg and Keith Tallet).

A viewer’s experience of a work of art is like the narrow passage that connects the two spaces of an hourglass. On one side are the forces that make the work available to the viewer, and on the other is the realm of possible interpretations. Perception and reaction are the sand in the hourglass, and the practical details and logistics that move it are as invisible — yet measurable — as air or gravity.

Through "Work Space," Thomas has made some of these forces a little more tangible and much more immediate.