Aug 8, 2010
This week: We talk to Artist Nathan Carter who has a work in the current MCA Exhibition “Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy”about his work, the youth perspective, and the secret trasmissions of numbers stations.
Here is a slightly outdated bio I lifted: Nathan Carter’s wall
reliefs, sculptures, collages, and hanging objects are inspired by
myriad aspects of contemporary society: modes of transportation,
mass communication devices, sports insignias, and architecture for
mass gatherings like stadiums and parade grounds. At once gestural
and reductive, his works amplify strategies first explored by
modernist artists in the early 20th century. Deeply rooted in a
fascination with how visual abstract codes represent a means of
abbreviated, if not universal, communication, Carter’s free-form
compositions are simultaneously non-objective and referential.
Playful at first impression, Carter’s art contains allusions to
mundane yet foreboding engagements, such as radio transmissions,
encoded transcriptions, and other electronic communications that
serve not only to link us to world networks, but also to place us
under surveillance and deprive us of our privacy. Often our
dependence on these tools and the despair that results from their
failure to properly operate is a recurring leitmotif in his
work.
Nathan Carter was born in Dallas, TX, in 1970 and currently lives
and works in New York, NY. He received his MFA from Yale
University, New Haven, CT, in 1999. He has had solo exhibitions at
Galería Pilar Parra, Madrid (2007); Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York
(2006, 2004, 2001); and Esther Schipper, Berlin (2006). He also
participated in Art 33 Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2002).
Selected group exhibitions include Neo Baroque, DA2 Centre
of Contemporary Art of Salamanca, Spain (2005-06); Greater New
York 2005, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City,
NY; and GNS, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2003).