JENENE NAGY


FORGETTING THE NAME

SEPTEMBER 24 – OCTOBER 30, 2015

OPENING RECEPTION:
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2015, 6 – 8 PM

GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY is pleased to present the inaugural solo gallery exhibition of artist Jenene Nagy in Forgetting the name.

Dark, shimmering plains, angles and textures shine into your peripheral vision with shifting light in Jenene Nagy’s artwork. Shards of fragile, dark sheets glimmer and change with every glance. Celebrating the full potential of her materials, Nagy maximizes the simple and responsive qualities of traditional art materials. Through use of graphite, paper and her own hands, Nagy creates untraditional and provocative works of art that are visually hypnotic and conceptually powerful, even with their delicate structure.

The pristine, multi-faceted cut of a diamond elevates its worth and status. Nagy uses particular diamond cuts as a start for her abstraction, and creates tension between our perceived values of objects. Using a painstaking process similar to that of diamond carvers, Nagy tirelessly creates two and three-dimensional multi-faceted surfaces in her works to explore this value-making process with an alternate material, transforming her materials into an object of worth.

JENENE NAGY

PARTIAL PREVIEW IMAGES

     

Working with graphite and paper, Nagy creates shining, sculptural, abstract works; some wall-mounted, some self-standing. Conceptually, the work is in response to a culture based on class. Nagy’s work finds strength in structure and in space, with help from the viewers. The works’ surroundings help to reveal the material’s full potential, with variable light behavior and its relationship to the physical properties of her materials and the viewers’ vision. As light changes and as the viewers move around the objects, the facets of each piece become more pronounced and the time and energy put into each shining surface helps to build up its glamorous façade and value, much like a diamond. This allows the spectator to control and manage their engagement with the work, and activating the pieces in dynamic ways, allowing for complexities to unfurl slowly. Nagy’s work is a testament to the human interaction with material and perception.

Forgetting the name explores the act of looking, and focuses on the inherent opportunity that art can have, giving viewers a unique experience without preconception. Approaching something without presumption helps to open up the experience for a new kind of understanding. Taking note from Robert Irwin’s book, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, Nagy uses this theme as a launching point for further consideration of experience and perception in her art.

Nagy is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Painting art at University of California, Riverside, and has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the Takt Kunstprojektraum in Berlin, Germany, and Dam Stuhltrager in NY, Portland Art Museum and Weatherspoon Art Museum, among others. She has received grants from the NY Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Ford Family Foundation, Colorado Creative Industries, and the Oregon Arts Commission. Her work was named by the Huffington Post as one of the Northwest’s Top Ten Exhibition Picks of 2010.

Forgetting the name opens on Thursday, September 24, 2015 with a reception from 6:00 to 8:00pm. The exhibition will remain on view until October 30, 2015.