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Connections between the curious and the familiar offer endless opportunities for exploration. The simple pairing of two dissimilar objects sets the stage: conflict, dialogue, action, and emotion. Contrast leads to comparison; meaning occurs through difference.
I am interested in subverting the viewing experience. Ambiguous points of reference in my sculpture-- both in imagery and in scale--invite a comparison with personal memory and the structures of experience. Guided by visual clues, viewers must invent their own connections with and within my work, by calling upon previous associations and learned conventions surrounding their own understanding of experience. Expectations implied by the rational or familiar lead to new points of speculation within the landscape of the absurd or uncanny.
In my studio, questions asked regarding the act of viewing lead to successive lines of inquiry concerning the boundary between object and its situation: The role of wall and pedestal is a significant component of the viewer’s encounter with the work. Surface, scale, color, shape and technique participate in the experience of unfolding the narrative to the observer. My recent body of work concerns itself with concepts of architecture and landscape. These pieces are at once objects upon pedestals, and also pedestals unto themselves; stages on which forms interact and combine to provide implied narratives within animated and ambiguous spaces, inhabiting the spaces between understood memory and fleeting notion.
Please click here to view Nathan’s resume.
Nathan Prouty
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