On View: To Assemble

NARS 2020 Season III Residency Exhibition

To Assemble

Sept 4 - 23, 2020

Featuring NARS 2020 Season III Residency Artists:

Amir Hariri | Joseph Wilcox | Matthew Cronin

Curated By Elisa Gutierrez Eriksen

Make an appointment to visit the exhibition

NARS Foundation is excited to present To Assemble, an exhibition featuring the works of our Season III, 2020 Artists in Residence, Amir Hariri, Joseph Wilcox and Matthew Cronin.

This Residency Season has been one in which we are relearning how to be with each other in the same space, in part due to a global pandemic that to this day is still a threat, and in part from the political and social panorama that has taken many people to the street to demand the end of systemic racism, police brutality and overexertion of power.

Inside and outside, we’re re-thinking the ways in which we can reconfigure structures that have been in place for too long, and to learn new ways to share, take, and make space to assemble.

Wilcox, Hariri and Cronin have backgrounds in strict disciplines -photography, engineering/ architecture- yet they have stepped away from them and adopted a more disruptive/alternative approach in their work. 

Through the recollection of images and materials -from catalogs, construction sites, internet or real life events like protests- they have brought to the gallery a vision of a world that is constantly being dematerialized, and have each pieced it together with particular approaches.

Each work threads a series of unseen structures arising from ideas related to the ways in which images are created, distributed and presented; the ways in which we experience space; and the ways to reconfigure and reveal the layers of an industrial apparatus that remains unknown. 

They converge from very different directions, all containing the tensions of erasure, destruction and transformation, to reveal what’s been concealed and then piece things together.

By looking at structures they recollect information and ideas that take shape and reflect on the current events, and more importantly, the ways in which we take in data, and the way it transforms us.

Speculative Interiors virtual exhibition and interview

See the exhibition and read the interview here.

Silver Eye / Contorted Interiors

An online exhibition by student scholar Ema Furusho, focusing on artist Matthew Cronin

There is something wrong in this house. There are warm saturated patterns and homely light, but the reflections in mirrors lead to different spaces, objects bleed into one another, and light streams in from an unknown outside. It is as if the room is rejecting itself from within, poisoned by some underlying source. In Dwelling, Matthew Cronin uses inconsistency of space as a constant thread. The contorted objects in these constructed rooms simultaneously entice and repel the viewer, disrupting the comfort of what appears at first to be a comfortable domestic space.

Cronin constructs the photographs from transparencies produced for JCPenny catalogues from the 70’s that he came across in the summer of his final year at the University of Texas’s MFA program. During this time, he was considering how to make photographs without using a camera and pivoting to a process of constructing photographs rather than finding them. Cronin uses the transparencies as source material, montaging them through processes of multiple exposures and digital manipulation. Often, the transparency’s discoloration from age appears directly in the final image, creating the sickly saturated hues of the patterns and furniture. Through this collage process, Cronin reconsiders the ideologies being sold via the objects, drawing out the particularity and exclusivity of class, taste, and aspirations that they put forth, drawing inspiration from his own upbringing in a working-class family.

Some of the most prominent inconsistencies throughout the project are light and outside space. There always seems to be light streaming in from outside, casting shapes across the interior with familiar warmth. In Dwelling 05, light filters through a garden fence-like structure, posing as a bedroom wall. The domestic setting is inverted. Despite the firmness of the meticulously made bed, the room begins to feel porous, there is a lack of structural integrity to the image. As the object and materials collapse, the reliability of the presented lifestyle is questioned.

When we are finally shown a window to the outside, in Dwelling 03, it is a stubbornly flat composited image that peers back at us from between the window panes. Playful misalignment of space creates a distinctive and unsettling experience.

Cronin’s manipulated interiors reflect the particularity of the American middle-class aspirations being sold through the interior decor catalogue. Through the contortion of time and space, it is presented as a beautiful yet unreliable fever dream.

Humble Arts Interview

In his recent series, Dwelling, Matthew Cronin scans and warps 1970s JC Penny catalog photographs to create a sense of uneasiness on the construction of domestic scenes.

In 2018, Matthew Cronin came across an archive of large-format 1970s JC Penny catalog transparencies. Like much commercial photography then and now, these slick, elaborately lit commercial interior shots created a stylized illusion of domesticity to sell beds, sofas, and other household items.

Drawn to their peculiar, dated fantasies, Cronin scans, layers and subtly manipulates each image to subvert their narratives. Fake shadows appear where they shouldn’t and don’t where they should. Patterns mysteriously bleed from the fabric into other surfaces and formerly “inviting” interiors now hover in purgatory - somewhere between comfort and terror. Digital specters are clear and constant reminders that we are seeing their strings.

Having spent time with his work when I selected it for PhotNola’s “Currents” exhibition at the Odgen Museum of Southern Art last December, I reached out to Cronin to learn more about the artist and his work.

Read the full interview here

On View: Source Matters

Curated By Elisa Gutierrez Eriksen

Featuring NARS 2020 Season I Residency Artists:

Rusudan Melikishvili (Denmark) | Brian Napier (USA) | Ellen Bleiwas (Canada)

Joseph Moore (USA) | Laure Hocine (Belgium)  | Sarah Williams (USA)

Lauren Cohen (US/UK) | Matthew Cronin (USA) | Joani Tremblay (Canadian)

Sareh Imani (Iran/USA) | Sepideh Farzam (Iran/Australia) | Furen Dai (China/USA)

NARS is pleased to present ‘Source Matters’, an exhibition featuring the works of our 2020 Season I artists-in-residence. 

Source plays an important role in the work of these artists. Whether it be images extracted from old catalogs, borrowed medical methodologies, over-viewed and mediatized images in postcards, natural derived materials, data, taxidermied species, uncomfortable moments in American history,  feelings of discomfort, the US national census, online cameras in the world, or future memories —all revolve around narratives, constructions and gestures that describe the importance of finding different ways to perceive, read, and interpret. 

The way we interpret a source can determine a path, transcend time, reveal other narratives and very possibly,  enter us into an endless loop —a constant search for the source, for what matters.