Winter 2018
Good people,
I'm thrilled to share that some of my work will be presented as part of Artspace's winter show, on view from November 30-March 2. In Plain Sight/Site is a group exhibition that explores Connecticut’s historic role in the making of New England as we know it. Developed by New York City-based anthropologist and curator Niama Safia Sandy, In Plain Sight/Site showcases an ensemble of ten artists engaged in the multi-disciplinary project of fastening the foundational economies and histories of early New England, and the Western world-at-large, to our present day relationships with labor, land, and race. At its core, the exhibition is an endeavor to illustrate specific ways in which the cogs in the wheels of early American settler and economic movements and interventions on this land created a specific kind of historical blindness that allowed for systems of inequality to flourish and prevail even today.
It is absolutely humbling to have my work (6 large prints and a photobook, Devil Town, available in limited quantity) shown alongside that of far more established creators, arranged by a visionary curator. I hope to see you at the opening reception on the evening of Friday, November 30th!
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For those of you who can't make it, here are a few sources of recent inspiration that might interest you as well:
1. If you've read William Gibson's Neuromancer but never got to the remainder of the trilogy, I recommend it not just because the two subsequent books are written better, but specifically because Count Zero brilliantly incorporates Joseph Cornell's shadowboxes, providing wonderful descriptions of their strange power. Writing on art in fiction (especially science fiction) is typically hackneyed, but Gibson acquits himself well here. (Ten years ago, he wrote that "some very considerable part of the gestural language of public places, that had once belonged to cigarettes, now belonged to phones." Pity about the smell and the lung cancer, as I think otherwise this was a preferable scenario.)
2. I'm becoming convinced that we (as a species) need to take Deleuze more seriously if we want to progress, or if we want to not to hasten global heat death and other such catastrophes. Simon O'Sullivan's Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari: Thought Beyond Representation, while a bit indulgent in parts, provides some useful artistic frameworks in this regard which can of course be applied more broadly.
3. I've been making so much moody black & white work lately that seeing strong color photography has provided something of a relief. Looking at Luigi Ghirri's Kodachrome (thanks, Dave!), Sarah Walker's Second Sight, and Excavating the Future City, Aperture's recent survey of Naoya Hatakeyama's career, has brought much joy.
Keep each other warm as the light grows shorter!
In solidarity,
Nate
I'm thrilled to share that some of my work will be presented as part of Artspace's winter show, on view from November 30-March 2. In Plain Sight/Site is a group exhibition that explores Connecticut’s historic role in the making of New England as we know it. Developed by New York City-based anthropologist and curator Niama Safia Sandy, In Plain Sight/Site showcases an ensemble of ten artists engaged in the multi-disciplinary project of fastening the foundational economies and histories of early New England, and the Western world-at-large, to our present day relationships with labor, land, and race. At its core, the exhibition is an endeavor to illustrate specific ways in which the cogs in the wheels of early American settler and economic movements and interventions on this land created a specific kind of historical blindness that allowed for systems of inequality to flourish and prevail even today.
It is absolutely humbling to have my work (6 large prints and a photobook, Devil Town, available in limited quantity) shown alongside that of far more established creators, arranged by a visionary curator. I hope to see you at the opening reception on the evening of Friday, November 30th!
image.png
For those of you who can't make it, here are a few sources of recent inspiration that might interest you as well:
1. If you've read William Gibson's Neuromancer but never got to the remainder of the trilogy, I recommend it not just because the two subsequent books are written better, but specifically because Count Zero brilliantly incorporates Joseph Cornell's shadowboxes, providing wonderful descriptions of their strange power. Writing on art in fiction (especially science fiction) is typically hackneyed, but Gibson acquits himself well here. (Ten years ago, he wrote that "some very considerable part of the gestural language of public places, that had once belonged to cigarettes, now belonged to phones." Pity about the smell and the lung cancer, as I think otherwise this was a preferable scenario.)
2. I'm becoming convinced that we (as a species) need to take Deleuze more seriously if we want to progress, or if we want to not to hasten global heat death and other such catastrophes. Simon O'Sullivan's Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari: Thought Beyond Representation, while a bit indulgent in parts, provides some useful artistic frameworks in this regard which can of course be applied more broadly.
3. I've been making so much moody black & white work lately that seeing strong color photography has provided something of a relief. Looking at Luigi Ghirri's Kodachrome (thanks, Dave!), Sarah Walker's Second Sight, and Excavating the Future City, Aperture's recent survey of Naoya Hatakeyama's career, has brought much joy.
Keep each other warm as the light grows shorter!
In solidarity,
Nate