Resilience of Scale, the new solo exhibition by Thomas J Price, is open to the public through June 15, 2025, at Hauser & Wirth’s SoHo gallery in New York. Stepping inside feels like suddenly finding oneself immersed in a bronze forest. The British artist’s sculptures—towering up to twelve feet high—rise directly from the floor, without pedestals or separation, as if rooted in the very fabric of the city. There are no barriers, no prescribed paths: visitors move among these figures as if among living presences, observing them from below, up close, from every angle, with the distinct sensation of walking through a new kind of monument.
The subjects Price chooses are not conquerors, saints, or men of power, but ordinary people—those you might pass on the way out of the subway or while waiting for a coffee at a café. Faces and bodies drawn from everyday life, they wear hoodies, jeans, and caps, their expressions are inward, their postures suspended, apparently lost in distant thoughts. And yet, in their silence, in their complete naturalness, they possess a power that far exceeds that of traditional monuments.
Born in London in 1981 and trained at both Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art, Price has always sought to overturn the codes of monumentality. Before translating his figures into bronze using the ancient lost-wax technique, he builds them digitally, assembling traits and gestures observed in the street, during castings, or in magazines. There are no real-life models: each face, each body, is a composite of lived experiences from discreetly gathered details—a nose, a profile, a posture.
In A Place Beyond, his most recent work, Price uses a golden alloy for the first time—bright, almost regal. “For me, gold is a material loaded with meaning,” he said. “It can speak of power, of wealth, but also of spirituality.” The result is a figure that glimmers in the gallery’s natural light, yet never ceases to feel human. In fact, perhaps it feels even more so.
