Coal, the raw material used to create the works in the selection, reflects this approach. Through this series, Tom Price has found and exploited this mineral's narrative resources, another essential aspect of his work: “It is important to me that my work conveys a story or a message”, he states.



Coal is one of the purest forms of carbon, and carbon is the fundamental building block of all living organisms on the planet. It is for this reason that the artist has chosen coal to represent the human figure: “Casting it into the mold is like reporting the memory of the presence of the model, when it was cast”, he says. The series suggests, in manner that is both troubling and poetic, the simultaneous presence and absence of this human form. Each new cast, created from the same mold, seems to express a slow disappearance, like the memory of a familiar presence that will be erased with the passing of time. The phantom-like figures of the series “The Presence of Absence” (created specifically for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City for his first solo exhibition in the United States, in 2014) are reminiscent of the “carbonized” bodies discovered in Pompeii. The artist was inspired by the paradox of the cataclysmic event that simultaneously destroyed and preserved the inhabitants of this Roman city.