Sloan Fine Art, in conjunction with Greene Contemporary, is pleased to present Black Forest / White Lightning by Nathan Skiles.
In Black Forest / White Lightning, Nathan Skiles presents a collection of densely adorned cuckoo clocks, ranging from the intricately elegant to the over-the-top outr... Read more
Sloan Fine Art, in conjunction with Greene Contemporary, is pleased to present Black Forest / White Lightning by Nathan Skiles.
In Black Forest / White Lightning, Nathan Skiles presents a collection of densely adorned cuckoo clocks, ranging from the intricately elegant to the over-the-top outrageous, as a means to invigorate his method of associative image making and feed his interest in the incongruous. While the clocks lend themselves easily to observations on the convenient clichés and “rules” of time and space, specific (and repeated) themes within the works expand beyond immediate associations and evolve into musings on the self-consciousness and limits popularly ascribed to these rules. Specifically, in “Two Headed Boy Part 1” and the pair “The Vanitas of Vineta,” Skiles uses iconography such as the ouroborus, a wishbone, the Cottingley Fairies, George Washington’s wooden teeth and the Inverted Jenny Stamp to investigate how time, space, legend and chance influence our perceptions of identity, continuity, value and truth. And with his innovative use of foam rubber as his primary material, Skiles tricks the eye and obliterates the baggage of immediate recognition, further challenging his audience to look beyond the immediate and investigate the core issues presented in his work.
Nathan Skiles earned his BFA from Ringling School of Design and his MFA from Montclair State University. This is his second solo exhibition in New York.