DAVID THORNE

David Thorne is a politically engaged artist. He frequently collaborates with Los Angeles based artist Julia Meltzer to produce installations, photographs, and videos that raise questions about the uses of documents and their social, political, and affective impact.
Formerly working under the moniker The Speculative Archive, the artists’ collaborative activities from 1999 to 2003 examined the intersection of state secrecy, memory, and history. Newer works address the use of documents— ranging from images and texts to objects, people, and even physical structures—“to project and claim visions of the future,” according to the artists.
Thorne is he recipient of a 2007 Art Matters grant and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award, and a 2004 recipient of a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship. He completed his MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio at the
University of California, Los Angeles in 2004. In spring 2006 David was a visiting artist at The Cooper Union in New York City. He collaborated with Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, and Katya Sander on the project 9 Scripts from a Nation at War for documenta 12.

epic (malhame), Julia Meltzer & David Thorne, 2008 © the artists & producerWe will live to see these things, or, five pictures of what may come to pass, Julia Meltzer & David Thorne, 2007 © the artists & producerTake into the air my quiet breath, 2007, Julia Meltzer & David Thorne © the artistsIt’s not my memory of it: three recollected documents, Julia Meltzer & David Thorne, 2003 © the artists & producerNot a matter of if but when: brief records of ... , 2006, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne © the artists