Brooklyn-based artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s beautifully distorted and visceral works reveal deeper truths.
Artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn
“I hope to convey a sense of how our experiences, both good and bad, operate to construct our identities,” offers Brooklyn-based artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn about this fall’s exhibition at Gagosian (980 Madison Ave.), Not Far From Home; Still Far Away. The exhibition showcased new paintings and works on paper, marking his first exhibition with the gallery in New York. The fragmented portraits in charcoal, gouache, oil paint, oil stick and pastel pull from online media, fashion magazines, comic books and family snapshots—and thoughtfully juxtapose perception versus memory.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn, “Popeye” (2021, black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel on Coventry vellum paper), 18 inches by 15 inches
The surrealist, fractured effect is multifaceted and speaks to our subconscious and the societal currents of today. “I also want to portray a mutual relationship between the acceptable and the unacceptable, the grotesque and what is aesthetically pleasing,” Quinn says. The result is a pensive meditation of the schisms that define us today.
Photography by: NATHANIEL MARY QUINN PHOTO BY KYLE DOROSZ; “POPEYE” PHOTO BY ROB MCKEEVER, © NATHANIEL MARY QUINN, COURTESY OF GAGOSIAN
