303 Gallery is proud to present our first exhibition of new work by Nick Mauss.
Using elements of drawing, painting, video, sculpture and installation, Mauss has utilized disparate media toward an experiential exhibition that is directly sensitized to both inviting and disconcerting the viewer. Works hover on the edge of palpability, as walking through the exhibition becomes a physical manifestation of ideas introduced through the various two and three-dimensional works in the show. A wood frame supports a sheet of stretched paper at the entrance of the gallery, a jagged geometric form carved out of its center. This passageway stands as both entrance and barrier. A series of drawings are etched into silver leaf; drawn, erased and retraced onto themselves, their reflective surfaces merge with their quasi-hieroglyphic inscriptions, allowing material and manipulation to coalesce into each other in volatile suspension. Precariously balanced on plinths almost flush with the gallery walls, these drawings function sculpturally as well, caught between being hung and being left behind. Another grouping of drawings is strung together like sentences, with images inserted into each other to create a confusing, rich simultaneity. These drawings are either displayed on low platforms on the floor, or affixed directly to the wall, creating an architecture of windows.
In the center of the gallery, an ambiguous video of a scroll being pulled through a pair of still hands is projected onto a wood plank. The projection echoes the various isolated frames found in the figuration of the drawings, which could be read as renderings of other projections. The constantly moving scroll recalls a film leader or printing press as it perpetually moves through the stillness of its carapace, in this case a pair of hands. Each piece or series of pieces, caught in its own duality, also communicates with the pieces around it, creating a sort of constellation of objects, or a new terrain in the gallery space. The viewer is implicated in its navigation, allowed to draw personal paths and fill in the illusory blank spaces.
Nick Mauss is currently included in the exhibition “Compass in Hand” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Earlier this year, he was included in “modern modern”, curated by Pati Hertling at the Chelsea Art Museum, New York. A catalog with text by Stefan Kalmer was published to accompany the exhibition. In 2008, he was included in the group exhibitions “Some Neighbors”, Kunstverein Munchen, Munich, Germany; and “Sunset” at Magasin, Grenoble, France. In 2007, Mauss and Ken Okiishi had an exhibition of their collaborative work titled “A Fair to Meddling Story” at the Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany and a catalogue of the project was published by JRP RIngier.