In the Nasher’s Public Gallery, Dallas-based artist Tom Orr will present Atlas, 2025, a new installation engaging with optical phenomena that shift and change in relation to the viewer’s movement. Continuing his formal exploration of the moiré pattern—a seemingly animated visual effect that is created in the brain when a person looks at two overlapping patterns—Orr's complex, large-scale sculpture appears to gently wave or writhe as the viewer moves around its cylindrical form. What could be considered a simple optical phenomenon becomes in his hands a means to induce wonder by short-circuiting the rational part of the brain that is always ready to define and categorize what the eye sees. With Atlas, Orr establishes the possibility of an indefinable, and ultimately indescribable, experience with an artwork that appears shimmeringly unstable as one moves around it.
From monumental public sculpture commissions to intimate works on paper, Orr has worked in a variety of materials over more than four decades to explore the formal, psychological, and emotional impact of visual distortions and anomalies. Titled for the mythical Titan who holds up the heavens, Atlas concentrates Orr’s fascination with moiré patterns into a singular work. At its core is a dynamic construction of Plexiglas, crumpled Lexan panels, and square aluminum tubing; with some of the panels printed with black stripes, subtle incidents of a moiré pattern are visible. Surrounding this configuration is a ring of black fiberglass rods suspended from a circular aluminum ring, creating a curtain of vertical lines that generate an intensified, overall moiré effect. The work’s circularity encourages viewers to move around it, observing changes in the patterns created by the shifting overlap of linear elements but also catching sight of visitors on the other side of the sculpture.
Orr’s interest in our perceptual responses to optical effects partakes in a long tradition of concern with the psychological impact of formal choices artists make. The role played by the transparency of the Plexiglas and Lexan in appearing to dematerialize the core of Atlas and the geometric, abstract orientation of the overall structure recalls the practice of constructivist artists like Naum Gabo (1890-1977) and László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). Likewise, Orr’s job at Janie C. Lee’s Dallas gallery in the early 1970s exposed him to a generation of post-minimalist artists, such as Larry Bell (b. 1939), Lynda Benglis (b. 1941), and Alan Shields (1944-2005), who were exploring the affective aspects of materials like glass, polyurethane foam, and unstretched canvas to elicit unexpected reactions in viewers.
Orr has traced his interest in moiré effects to experiences he had in his childhood. The bedroom he shared with his brother had Venetian blinds, and at night if the slats were turned slightly, lines of light would appear on the ceiling. Since their neighbor was a television repairman who often worked late, the lines of light seeping through the blinds would often flicker and change colors as the sets were adjusted. Orr also noticed that the cord hanging in front of the blinds could produce a moiré effect that would shift and change as he batted at the cord. These moments of childhood wonder have remained strong in Orr’s memory, motivating his desire to create related effects in his own art, in the hopes of setting up the possibility for an analogous encounter for the viewer. In Orr’s words, “I am trying to make something happen visually that does not need description. I am looking for that moment when thought leaves the materials and the object and concentrates on the idea.”
About Tom Orr
A dedicated artist working in Dallas while exhibiting internationally, Tom Orr has developed a body of sculptural work that utilizes formal traits to disrupt and create vibrant optical patterns. Experiential movement brings the nuances of the work to life.
Tom Orr received his BFA in Sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design in 1973. He has exhibited extensively during his career both in the United States and in Japan. His site-specific works have been installed in places ranging from John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to the 21st Exhibition of Contemporary Sculpture in Ube, Japan. The many collections in which he is represented include The El Paso Museum of Art in Texas and the Utsukushi-Ga-Hara Open-Air Museum in Nagano, Japan. Among his public art projects are two large-scale wall installations in the international terminal at the Dallas Fort Worth Airport, a station design for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit, and Intersected Passage, a large-scale sculpture at Dallas Love Field Airport. Orr and fellow artist and partner, Frances Bagley, designed the sets and costumes for the Dallas Opera’s production of Verdi’s Nabucco, which celebrated the Opera’s 50th anniversary season. This project was followed by an invitation from The Dallas Museum of Art to create a museum installation based on the set designs from the opera for the exhibition Performance/Art.
In 2011 Orr was awarded a Pollack Krasner Foundation Grant.
He is represented by Barry Whistler Gallery in Dallas.