30 July - 13 August 2011
Opening 30 July at 14:00
Please join us for the opening address by Jeremy Wafer
(Associate Professor in Fine Arts, Wits School of the Arts)
Preview by appointment
Artist's walkabout on Thursday 4 August at 18:00
For info in additional artist's talks, please scroll down
For Nathaniel Stern’s ongoing series of performative prints, he straps a desktop scanner, laptop and custom-made battery pack to his body, and ‘performs images into existence’. He might scan in straight, long lines across tables, tie the scanner around his neck and swing over flowers, do pogo-like gestures over bricks, or just follow the wind over water lilies in a pond. The dynamism between his body, technology and the landscape is transformed into beautiful and quirky renderings, which are then produced as archival art objects.
Giverny of the Midwest is a panoramic installation of nearly 100 such prints, rendering water lilies, leaves and other organic forms into lush and rippling images. The source materials were scanned during a week-long camping trip next to a lily pond in South bend, Indiana, and edited together over the course of almost 2 years. The piece explicitly cites Monet’s large-scale painting and installation, Water Lilies (1914 – 1926), at the Museum of Modern Art in new York. It is similarly an immersive triptych of over 250 square feet (totaling 2 X 12m) and follows the patterns of light and colour in monet’s panorama. But Giverny of the Midwest‘s three large panels move between proximity and distance, and are broken down into differently-sized and –shaped prints on watercolour paper, each evenly spaced apart. The tensions between flow and geometry, life and modularity, place it in further dialogue with other trajectories of modern and contemporary art, and simultaneously activate the possibilities of working across digital and traditional forms.
Also part of the exhibition, is The Giverny Series, consisting of 8 individual prints (edition 10 each, 2011) and In the fold, an artist’s book (forthcoming), both produced using imagery from the aforementioned “art camping trip” in South Bend, Indiana.
Artist’s presentations
At the walkabout (GALLERY AOP, 4 August at 18:00), Nathaniel Stern will conduct an open discussion about Giverny of the Midwest: the prints, the process and the in-betweens.
At both artis’s talks (see below), he will talk about his trajectory of thinking and making, which centers around curiosity, generosity and dialogue. He’ll present his work as a series of questions that often lead to interdisciplinarity and collaboration, and the combination of new and traditional media.
Artist’s talks