Nathan Mabry: Armature — January 8 - February 12, 2011
Nathan Mabry’s work transforms the known into the new and the unexpected. In doing so Mabry asserts artistic agency while at the same time engaging with both art history and normative objects as readymades. A Duchampian trajectory is balanced by an art-making urge that springs from other early Modernists such as Brancusi, Lipchitz and Picasso, whose visual avarice led them to a range of “exotic” cultural material in an effort to create their own visual language. While the borrowings of the Early Modernists from Native American, Pre-Columbian and African art are quite direct, our thinking about the complexity of their interactions with their source material usually is not. Working with both threads in mind is interesting to Mabry, who is ultimately focused on the integrity of his own art objects. Mabry's fascination with how objects function in the public mind and his desire to address the totality of culture, both high and low, fuels an urge to make relevant, holistic objects that engage with the inherent complexities of the world in which we live. Whether we experience Mabry's pieces through art history, or other modes of consumption, is a topic that allows for humor and surprise, complexity and contemplation. Read more »