Art

ART AT BISTRO LQ

 

 Bistro LQ wishes to tantalize all the sense of our guests, and the presentation of the meal is only one component of the perfect dining experience - it is also important to enjoy food in an aesthetically pleasing environment. Every three months, one of the walls at Bistro LQ will be dedicated to featuring the work of an artist we love. In this way, we hope to not only satisfy your craving for cutting edge food, but for amazing artwork as well.

BISTRO LQ FEATURED ARTIST - Fall 2010

­­Tm Gratkowski

­­trgratkowski@gmail.com

 

Tm Gratkowski’s art is both concept-driven and process-driven.
Beneath a tangle of fragmented vignettes: patterns, colors and textures, one
encounters thought-provoking words, images and stories – the experience is
visceral as well as intellectual. Using source material primarily from
advertising, Tm layers and juxtaposes print-media to question the popular
influences we encounter everyday in our media-saturated world.
Tm composes layers of paper, much the way a painter builds up their canvas
with layers of paint, to develop his imagery. He layers paper until he
discovers a story paradigm or a subject matter that promotes a dialogue
between the viewer and the art.
The Idea for “Scraps” came as a shift in methodology to introduce random
pattern possibilities into the work. The material is randomly put down with
very little pre-meditation; the result is the juxtaposition of random adjacent
information that, when accumulated, renders a more formal pattern/
composition. Even the titles are conceived in a playful manner in which
words that appear in the works are copied and recomposed to create relevant
yet abstract titles.
After attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Hoschule
fur Agawandte Kunst in Vienna Tm has spent most of his professional career
as an artist working with collage, mixed media, experimental photography
and installations. Tm went onto receive a BS and a BFA from UW and a MA
from SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. His education and early works are rooted in
painting and drawing and he continues to develop these techniques and
applies them to unrelated mediums and materials.
Tm lives and works in Los Angeles.