NATE ETHIER
SPEAK ABOUT THE OCEAN April 7 – May 14 2016
nancy margolis gallery
This body of work, which began in late 2014, is a departure from the rigid and the opaque. These paintings are born from the grid, but grow into free and fluid space. They are open and at play as much as they are rigorous and stubborn. These pictures visually manifest the intersection of life and plans, that is to say, the overlap of reality and the ideal. My color is built, not applied. It is a conclusion, not a decision. There are layers of linear systems embedded into my paintings; some are chaotic, and some are rational. All of which only become important when engaged by each other. My relationship with abstraction has a great deal to do with the search for interdependent pictorial systems. My resulting compositions denote an otherness, or something bigger than the individual. They represent a vastness and a depth never to be exhausted but to forever be explored, much like the ocean.
— Nate Ethier
Cover: Speak About The Ocean 2015 Acrylic on canvas 63�x 57�
NATE ETHIER: SPEAK ABOUT THE OCEAN April 7 – May 14, 2016 Nancy Margolis Gallery is pleased to present Nate Ethier’s first solo exhibition in New York, Speak About The Ocean, opening on Thursday, April 7, 2016. The artist’s reception will be held April 7, 6 to 8pm. The exhibition will remain on view through May 14, 2016. Nate Ethier’s stunning geometric abstractions resonate with intense color and distinct forms. The principal themes and characteristics in his paintings are a loosely formatted grid, striking color, layered marks and systems structured rigidly, evenly and, at times, symmetrically. Strong contrasting colors, gestural brush strokes, opaque to transparent layers intertwine austere minimalism with moments of subtle softness. Treasured childhood memories impact Ethier’s consciousness as seen in the rendering of building bricks, a link to his father, and in the title of the exhibition, Speak About The Ocean, reflecting unforgettable memories of the sea growing up in a coastal town. Working more comfortably large, Ethier acknowledges that his paintings translate naturally and easily to the more monumental scale. Ethier’s paintings reveal themselves in stages: first with an explosion of brilliant colors, then followed by linear weavings, and last with a recognition of the many layers of intricacy forming the whole. Dynamic and powerful, Ethier’s paintings affirm a vision and skill that convey his capacity to create gorgeous, impactful paintings. Nate Ethier was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1977. He earned his MFA from Boston University College of Fine Arts in 2004, and his BA from Goddard College in 2000. His work has been presented in two and three person exhibitions, as well as group exhibitions at institutions and galleries including most recently Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY, Small Works: More or Less; Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY; Morris & Warren Gallery, New York, NY; Geoffrey Young Gallery, Barrington, MA; and Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA. He is a recent recipient of a Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Award 2014-2015 and a Rema Hort Foundation Emerging Artist Grant Nominee. Ethier currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Slew 2015 Acrylic on canvas 63”x 57”
Misfit Marigolds 2015 Acrylic on canvas 63”x 60”
Morning Person 2016 Acrylic on canvas 46”x 44.5”
Float Like You Mean It 2015 Acrylic on canvas 46”x 44.5”
Ritual 2015 Acrylic on canvas 63”x 57”
Ramble 2015 Acrylic on canvas 51.5”x 48”
Woot Woot 2014 Acrylic on canvas 63”x 60”
Hot Dusk 2016 Acrylic on canvas 25”x 23.5”
Taking in an April sunset over the New Jersey skyline, the art-critic-turned poet James Schuyler wrote, ‘you can’t get at a sunset naming colors.’ Born in Rhode Island in 1977, it seems fitting that Nate Ethier’s debut solo exhibition, Speak About the Ocean, casually double-dog dares the viewer to use words to describe the experience of the beauty and the sublime without detracting from the experience of it. I imagine his New England forefathers, (Poe, Emerson, and Melville, specifically) would have been pleased as punch to see these pictures. With this in mind, I’ll keep it brief, but I’ll be quick to point out that with a strong, silent-type demeanor, Ethier has been making pictures for two decades that do what Ludwig Wittgenstein (picking up on Plato) insisted on his entire life in this linchpin: ‘a light is lit in the soul, kindled, as it were, by a leaping flame, and thenceforward feeds itself.’ In other words, the facts of the world cannot be said, but only shown. And that’s an actual fact. Early on, empty beaches served as a canvas where he observed many sunsets, and perhaps formulated his first aesthetic theories. In these paintings, it is easy to see the smooth lines of the horizon, the absence of a vanishing point, the suddenly striated waves saturated in color and life breaking in the light. There is an overwhelming, yet wildly humbling reminder that art is very large, and ideas aren’t something you have, but rather, part of a larger dialogue that we’re lucky to hear, if we listen hard enough. Ethier’s paintings celebrate an unapologetic return to beauty that offers us permission to wander the halls of contemplation and transcendence completely uninhibited, with utter sincerity and vivid candor. Observe the rowdy, day-glow fashion of Andre Agassi’s bold tennis apparel of the 1980s; the abrupt transitions between unvarying color areas associated with hard-edge painting, all with a minimalist warmth and inner glow. These human-scale acrylic canvases fill the room with phosphorescences, organic forms, and the sharp calculations of the urban architecture that surrounds him in New York City, his present home. Unencumbered by the computer, these sturdy pictures are entirely handmade works of art that are as seductive as they are timeless. Drawing on various traditions of the twentieth century, in the last decade we can see the artist’s progression from the gestural abstraction he first experienced in the Green Mountains of Vermont, to a very cool, non-representative search for congruous clarity he discovered at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts. Speak About the Ocean is the culmination of his latest works (many composed at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in 2015) wherein a subtle return to mossy gradation is informed by the edgy precision of surface tension. His flamboyant geometric abstractions celebrate the intersection of the bucolic and the postindustrial world. Interchangeable modular structures are layered sonically; while antigravitational symmetry forms the bedrock of the work. Rock and roll, the rolling surf, wayward ease, ancient tesserae, and stained glass place the everyday in a ravishing history made anew. Creating compositions that allow optical emphasis to alternate and reverberate with unequivocal intensity and grace, the mechanics of Ethier’s paintings function as perpetual, philosophical, motion machines. — Kyle Schlesinger March 24, 2016 Austin, TX
NATE ETHIER Born in 1977, Providence, RI EDUCATION MFA in Painting, Boston University, Boston, MA BA in Liberal Arts, Goddard College, Plainfield, VT SOLO EXHIBTIONS 2016 Speak About The Ocean, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY, April 7 – May 14
SELECTED TWO/THREE PERSON AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2015 Small Works: More or Less, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY Checkered History: the Grid in Art and Life, Outpost Artists Resources, Ridgewood, NY (Curated by David Weinstein & Ruth Kahn) 2015 To The Edge: Jaqueline Cedar & Nate Ethier, Brian Morris Gallery & Buddy Warren Inc., New York, NY 2015 Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Open Studios, DUMBO Brooklyn, NY 2015 Polysolaris, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA 2015 20 x 16, Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY 2015 Pulled, C2C, San Francisco, CA 2014 NurtureART Benefit (invitational), The Boiler/Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2014 Beyond Measure, SEABA Gallery, Burlington, VT 2014 20 x 16, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA 2014 Convergence: Boston University Alumni, 808 Gallery, Boston MA 2013 Sluice Art Fair, Parallel Art Space, London, England 2013 NurtureART Benefit, Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, New York, NY 2013 All-over or nothing, Parallel Art Space, Ridgewood, NY 2013 Endless Summer, Brian Morris Gallery, New York, NY (Curated by Gary Petersen) 2013 Phaedo, Storefront Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY 2013 Overlap, Bennington Arts Center, Bennington, VT 2013 Paper Mirror Torn, Brian Morris Gallery, New York, NY 2013 Rituals of Exhibition II, H Gallery, Chiang Mai, Thailand 2012 X-centric, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA 2012 Resonant Frequencies: Roger Chamieh, Peter Edwards, and Nate Ethier, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA 2012 Treasure Maps: Nate Ethier and Julie Shapiro, Lenore Gray Gallery, Providence, RI 2012 Grid List- Detroit, Center Galleries, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI 2012 Grid List- New York, Allegra LaViola Gallery, New York, NY
SELECTED TWO/THREE PERSON AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS CONTINUED
2012 2012
Hung Jury, Curated by Susan Metrician, Boston, MA NurtureART Benefit, Charles Bank Gallery, New York, NY
AWARDS/HONORS 2014-15 2013 2011 2002-03
Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Award (formerly the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program) Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant Nominee Vermont Studio Center Visual Artist Grant Boston University, Constantin Alajalov Scholarship
RESIDENCIES 2014-15 2011
Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Vermont Studio Center
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 2013 “Nate Ethier,” Gorky's Granddaughter, November, http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2013/12nate-ethier-nov-2013.html 2013 Patrick Neal, “The Many Faces of Abstraction”, Hyperallergic, July 9 2013 “Age and Ageism: The Decisive Eye of Fellow Artists”, NY Arts Magazine, Summer 2012 Bill Van Siclen, “Nate Ethier: Patterns, Optical Effects Make for Eye Teasing Art”, Providence Journal, March 1
Catalog © 2016 NANCY MARGOLIS GALLERY Courtesy of Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York and Nate Ethier © Nate Ethier Photography © Nate Ethier All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any other means, electronic or mechanical now known or hereafter invented, without written permission of publisher.
Image above: Bring Bloom 2016 Acrylic on canvas 16.5”x15.75”
nancy margolis gallery 523 West 25th Street New York NY 10001 (212) 242 3013 www.nancymargolisgallery.com For more information please contact margolis@nancymargolisgallery.com