In and Out of the Rabbit Hole

Alexander Nolan felt that pull to nature as well, relocating to Lubec, Maine, after nearly two decades in the city. With latest newest solo exhibit In and Out of the Rabbit Hole he brought a piece of the rural north-eastern pleasures back to the city, allowing us to escape, if only for the amount of time we linger in front of his paintings.

Absent are the laundromats, bakeries, and alleyways of the city we’re used to seeing as the subject of Nolan’s work, instead, he’s turned towards the natural world— giving us a glimpse of the seascapes and orchards that surrounds his new life. Eschewing his typical crop of characters, his human protagonists now share the stage with lobsters, chickens, rabbits, whales. No human, mouse, or fish is arbitrary. Viewing these paintings, we get to observe the tenderness within the chaos of everyday life, we get to escape to a world that is innocent, playful, and sometimes absurd. The work on display is charming and unsuppressed, never overworked or forced— a welcome break from the fast-paced rhythms of New York that lie just outside the galleries door.

office caught up with Alexander Nolan to talk about his body of work and his new life in Maine.

Where do you get your inspiration? A lot of the themes in your work feel almost whimsical.

Sometimes I have an idea and I write it down and then I have a list of ideas. But sometimes it just comes to me. I just sort of sit in front of a blank canvas and sort of improv, I just let my mind kind of follow my instinct. I think a lot of it comes from the subconscious, but its not completely surreal.

Where do you go when you have a mental block?

Right now I live in Maine, so I take a walk and I see water. Being in nature, looking at water, or something beautiful kind of takes you out of your mind. That helps. But, sometimes, you just start working and then suddenly the ideas just come.

When did you first get interested in fine art?

Actually, first I was attracted to music. I played music and learned to play violin, technical things like scales and I thought that’s what I was going to do. I thought, “oh I’m gonna be a musician”. Then in high school, I started feeling like “this isn’t enough”, it wasn’t fulfilling me… I had an art teacher who supported me. Hekept on cheering me on and saying to keep going. The next thing you knew, I just wanted to be an artist. It felt like it was fulfilling to me. I felt like I started a new language that’s special.

You grew up in Wisconsin, and you’re in Maine now, it feels like you’re drawn to nature. Do you think your upbringing in Wisconsin had an impact on your style and aesthetic?

I’m not sure, it’s been like 20 years since I lived in Wisconsin. That’s where I grew up, where I had my childhood. When I was growing up in a small town I would just really yearn for a density of culture. I was looking for this other world. Maybe that’s why the artwork started, to make pictures that transported me to a different world.

What were you hoping that people get from this collection of work that you just showed? Is there an overall theme or feeling that you’re trying to achieve?

Well, I don’t live in the city anymore and I spent a week there when the show opened up, and I was thinking that this kind of feels different from your typical gallery show.. I would like [people] to feel like it's a breath of fresh air— wonder what it is about and get a kick out of it. Maybe have a laugh. I’d like [people] to come into the gallery and walk out feeling like “oh that was worth visiting”.

I can definitely feel like a moment of escape, because it is different from a lot of imagery you see in the city right now. How do you think this body of work compares to previous shows you’ve had, what do you think is different about this collection than previous ones aside from the subject matter?

This show feels like a cycle to me. I started the work in June, so it was made in three or four months. It’s a really tight body of work. It’s kind of funny, but actually my wife is also an artist. We just had a show open in Chicago and that show has a different feel. But that’s a different kind of comparison. It’s interesting, a couple having a show together.

Do you two collaborate a lot?

We don’t collaborate. We just talk a lot. We’re together a lot.

Is this the first time you’ve done a show with your wife?

Yes. Andrew Refits, the gallery we had the show at, he was like “why hasn’t anyone had a show with both of you?” He thought it would be fun. It made sense to him. But, that show has a lot of the panels I made in New York last summer and some older canvases from the early part of the year. It’s different because it’s not a tight group of work, whereas the show in New York has one speed [of work]. This never happens, I never have two shows at the same time. It’s cool.

What’s next for you? What’re you working on right now?

I am kind of excited to start a new body of work— experimenting with materials and seeing where that takes me.

Art

every cell met with instant ease: Female Pentimento

when i speak to myself i use the kindest language i can summon, i am allowed the same grace i give others

and once i gave myself permission i was radiant

Find more of this story in Issue 21.

Art

Nari Ward Loves Objects

May 01, 2024

Nari Ward loves objects. Many people love objects — shoes, books, chairs, mugs with their children’s faces on them, etc. — but Ward thinks about things a little differently. For him, the object is not an artifact of life but life itself: it is something to be held, treated with care, respected. His work, which spans the realms of sculpture, installation, video, and drawing, insists on this care as much as it wrestles with another, separate desire: to burn it all down. These impulses are not entirely different; rather, they represent a deep and enmeshed relationship to the general bric-a-brac and cacophony of stuff that populates our lives. Each and every room, whether real or imagined, is filled to the brim with items that signify empires crumbled and pasts abandoned. For Ward, these items speak, dance, engage in secret affairs of their own. Even the mugs with the faces.

By Phoebe Roberts
Portrait courtesy the artist and Lehman Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London. Photo Axel Dupeux

The Jamaican-born, New-York based artist has long been fascinated by objects. His best-known work, Amazing Grace (1993), featured over three-hundred baby strollers that the artist scavenged from the streets of Manhattan and then installed in the walkway of an abandoned Harlem fire-station. A statement on the AIDS crisis and drug epidemic ongoing in New York at the time (the strollers were often used by the city’s homeless population), the piece foregrounded Ward’s focus on utilizing found materials to tell stories that their human counterparts could not. Over the next three decades, the artist continued to work with such materials — shopping carts, bottles, doors, television sets, cash registers, and shoelaces included — and translate their silent language into a more readily accessible dialogue. The resulting practice is one filled with intimate links to the world around it: it sings of previously undiscovered connections, alerting us to the unspoken ties between us and our possessions.

Nari Ward Hunger Cradle, 1996 (detail). Yarn, rope, and found materials. Site specific installation. Installation view, "Global Vision: New Art From The '90s (Part II)", Deste Foundation, Athens, 1998. Private Collection. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Fanis Vlastaras and Rebecca Constantopoulou

Nari Ward: Ground Break (28 March- 28 July 2024), a retrospective at the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, offers an up-close look at this practice through a number of Ward’s sculptural installations and video works. Curated by Roberta Tenconi with Lucia Aspesi, the show begins with Hunger Cradle (1996-2024), one of the first large scale installations that the artist created in the 90's as part of the “3 Legged Race” exhibition in New York. A complex network of interlaced threads, Hunger Cradle unveils found objects — car parts, fire horses, a piano — that Ward collected from around the original show’s building and then embedded in the piece’s structure. Here, the work has been further enriched by new materials sourced from around the Pirelli HangarBicocca, including bricks used in the exhibition’s titular piece, Ground Break (2024), a sprawling floor installation made of over 4,000 concrete bricks and topped with decorative spiral motifs that resemble celestial bodies.

Nari Ward Happy Smilers: Duty Free Shopping, 1996. Awning, soda bottles, fire hose, fire escape, salt, household elements, audio recording, speakers, and aloe plant. Variable dimensions. Installation view, "Nari Ward: Happy Smilers," Deitch Projects, New York, 1996. Courtesy the artist and Lehman Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London, and GALLERIA CONTINUA

Although not the exhibition’s center piece, it is Hunger Cradle (1996) and its implied sense of support that best serve as a metaphor for what Ward, or so the viewer might be led to believe, is trying to express. From the dead fish whose carefully skinned flesh line the floor of Super Stud (1994/2024), a small house propped up on metal studs in the exhibition’s main room, to the tangle of stray shoelaces that make up Tumblehood (2015), a spherical sculpture that mimics a tumbleweed, what emerges above all is the artist’s desire for preservation amidst the never-ending flux of life. There is a dash of the mad collector here, or perhaps something of the old Proustian goal: to regain what is lost. Still, Ward goes beyond merely accruing disparate materials or using objects to recount past experience; instead, he takes things in, provides shelter, then suffuses them with his particular magic, which is also his art.

The show, on view at the Pirelli HangarBicocca’s cavernous space north of Milan’s city center until the end of July, affords us a previously undisclosed peek into the minds of one of America’s most compelling contemporary artists. It —and its many oddities and beauties— is not to be missed.

Nari Ward Ground (In Progress), 2015. Copper, darkening patina, 702 bricks, 9 sections of 78 bricks 6.4 x 121.9 x 121.9 cm (each section) 6.4 x 365.8 x 365.8 cm (overall as installed). Installation view, "Nari Ward: Breathing Directions," Lehmann Maupin, New York, 2015

Art

All Roots Lead to the Imaginary

During the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale, London-based gallery Unit London presented In Praise of Black Errantry. The show comprises 19 modern and contemporary Afro-diasporic artists, including the likes of post-modern pioneers and New York City natives Jean-Michel Basquiat and Romare Bearden, alongside post-post-modern artists such as Rachel Jones, Hilda Kortei, and Jonathan Lyndon Chase. Based on French philosopher and writer Eduard Glissant's definition of errantry, "a mode of freedom and resistance, evoking a spiritual or purposeful wandering beyond national borders," the show celebrates the boundless Black imagination in contemporary art.

In Praise of Black Errantry will be displayed from 17 April–29 June 2024.

Curated by art historian Indie A. Choudhury, the exhibition offers an expansive interpretation of errantry: "Errantry opens up alternative ways of thinking and perceiving, affording creative disorder and the reordering of narratives, histories, and temporalities. All roots (routes) lead to the imaginary." Errantry, as shown by the artists in the exhibition, is the unbridled ability to dream and create without the constraints of nationhood, predefined borders, or colonial inheritance.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Samo I and Samo II (1981)

Never is errantry more apparent than through the works of Basquiat and Romare Bearden, two New York artists at the center of In Praise of Black Errantry. Basquiat's work uses movement and broken imagery to create his errantry, rejecting the typical Western perception of what constitutes 'good art' and making his distinct visual language. His two works on display, Samo I and Samo II (1981), show fragmented images, a monstrous figure, and an explosion on a flat, dark background.

Romare Bearden, Seance (1984-86)

Bearden mirrors Basquiat in his use of fragmentation, using collages and bold colors to portray movement, music, and displacement themes. In Seance (1984-86), Bearden employs a blend of watercolor and gouache, resulting in rapid drying that gives rise to several figures distorted into monstrosity by their fluid interaction with colors; though not fully formed, their presence remains distinctly palpable. Bearden creates no divide between the figure and movement, blurring the lines between classical figuration and abstraction.

Rachel Jones, !!!!! (2024)

The influence of Basquiat and Beadern can be seen throughout the exhibit, as fragmentation, movement, and color are employed to explore post-postmodern errantry. In Rachel Jones's painting !!!!! (2024), bright, rich, abstract color islands float across the canvas, reminiscent of the ever-moving watercolor of Bearden. The artwork is unstretched, and the bottom is uneven, emphasizing its imperfection and materiality. As the title suggests, the painting is pure, intense emotion conveyed by the unbridled joy of her color and movement.

Hilda Kortei, Demur (2023)

Similarly, the painting Demur (2023) by Hilda Kortei uses a mixture of mediums, oil, acrylic, and charcoal, on fragmented collaged canvas to create a sculptural and layered painting. It defies the traditional conception of how a painting should be constructed and instead utilizes its flaws to create a multilayered cacophony of movement. While the hesitant title Demur is at odds with the excitement of Jones's !!!!!, both works employ similar techniques to build errantry. Neither work is static; each feels like it is ever evolving, a sentiment shared by all works in the exhibition.

In Praise of Black Errantry is a striking and unique exhibit. Within the larger context of the Biennale, whose theme this year was "Foreigners Are Everywhere," Unit London takes the opportunity to celebrate the non-conformity and limitless creativity of Afro-diasporic artists. By foregrounding the voices of marginalized communities and embracing the ethos of errantry, the exhibition transcends the limitations of cultural persistence and political containment. As curator Choudhury describes, the artists in the exhibition "take up errantry as a radical strategy that defies boundaries and advocates for spontaneity and experimentation beyond cultural fixity or political containment."

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