Municipal Bonds is pleased to present Alternating Currents, a duo exhibition exploring the dialogue between the works of Austin Thomas and Nick Polansky, on view January 10 through February 28, 2026. The exhibition examines how urban systems—structural, material, and perceptual—inform Thomas' and Polansky's distinct approaches to form and process. Both artists draw from the city's capacity for adaptation and transformation. Featuring Thomas' monotypes on found paper and Polansky's sculptures in reclaimed wood, Alternating Currents considers how reuse and rhythm serve as shared methods for articulating the intelligence of the built, human world.
In her work, Thomas responds to the vibration of her hometown, New York, a city rooted in history, innovation, and continual change. "Everything is the result of a series of decisions and good weather," she notes, a line that frames the measured yet organic pace of her practice. Her monotypes evolve through deliberate sequences, where shape and color operate with architectural clarity, modular and responsive. She works with materials drawn from the everyday: found plastic cast-offs, borrowed metal templates, vintage notebook pages, and recycled printed matter. Each composition balances control and motion, reflecting the adaptive systems through which the city sustains itself. Hand-cranked through the etching press, Thomas' work carries a steady beat of taut geometries: abstracted skyscrapers, street grids, and the shifting light and shadow between facades and sidewalks. They trace a pattern trodden on well-worn surfaces, beside passersby looking up toward neon lights and a changing skyline.
Rooted in the Bay Area's lineage of architectural experimentation and ecological sensibility, San Francisco-based Polansky works with reclaimed hardwood, engaging the physical properties of wood through the lens of his architectural training and practice. Using the bandsaw and table saw, he makes repeated, meticulous cuts that define geometric form, treating the kerf—the width of the cut made by the blade—as the physical equivalent of a draftsman's line weight. Each sculpture develops through precision and repetition, balanced by the organic variability of the wood—its grain, knots, and unpredictable resistance. The inevitable deviation of the human hand introduces a subtle variance, softening the work's geometric rigor into something quietly alive. This inquiry, in which precision is tempered by the distinct character of both medium and maker, defines Polansky's practice.
Through divergent media, both artists work within systems that mirror the environments they inhabit. Thomas reorders fragments of the urban landscape into new compositional structures, while Polansky shapes salvaged wood into forms that mediate between order and release. Each develops continuity through adaptation, where practice becomes a form of reasoning—empirical and physical, grounded in ethos. Alternating Currents situates their work within the evolving logic of the city, where process and environment remain in constant conversation.
