Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present, "Late One Night," an on-line exhibition of six unique sculptures by Nathan Mabry. Constructed in welded aluminum plates, cast stainless steel, and painted in black monochrome, the various pipes, beams and disks of Mabry's six sculptures evoke shape and line in strong physical silhouettes, which explore mass, volume and scale.
Nathan Mabry's "Late One Night" works utilize a language-like syntax that emphasizes flatness. They are organized with linear elements that open areas of interpretive space, creating a latitudinal setting for movement. Movement in Mabry's work spreads out across perpendicular and parallel planes; his sculptures are taught, specific, acute. Mabry's pieces have a visual tension that evolves as the viewer circumnavigates them, each new view revealing a new aspect of each work.
As one critic has written, the pieces included in “Late One Night” evoke, "the mystical presence of shadows.” Artist tools - clamps, gloves, cans - cast by Mabry in metal are affixed to each piece in a variety of locations. They punctuate Mabry's compositions and further emphasize our sense of making and movement. These tools seem to grip, grab, stack and squeeze Mabry's sculptures together, directing their energy inwards and outwards.
Several of the sculptures in "Late One Night" have an extreme vertical or horizontal orientation. They sit or stand above or below our eye level. A student of Charles Ray - whose own obsession with Anthony Caro's "Early One Morning" (1962) is documented in a conversation with Michael Fried - Nathan Mabry engages the formal language of High Modernism, eliminating base and pedestal. Mabry's sculptures stretch across the floor and upwards into the sky. They open up new possibilities for sculpture and involve the viewer in a physical experience of the work.
In the industrial remnants Mabry uses, we see a range of references and letterforms. How we look at things and think about them - be it physically, emotionally, or intellectually - is vital to Mabry's work. The materials of sculpture, the tools with which it is made, how we read artworks and how we think about them, are the subjects of Mabry's work. We are our own readymades, the accretion of our everyday lives our own material, the studio at night a place of personal illumination, where anything is possible, and inspiration abounds.
Nathan Mabry (b. 1978, Durango, CO) received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute (Kansas City, MO) in 2001 and his MFA from the University of California (Los Angeles, CA) in 2004. Mabry’s work was recently featured in major exhibition, “The Sorcerer’s Burden: Contemporary Art and the Anthropological Turn” at The Contemporary Austin (Austin, TX). Mabry’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions, including solo and group shows at the Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, TX); Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA); Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, CA); Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (San Diego, CA); Ahmanson Foundation Gallery (Irvine, CA); Las Vegas Art Museum (Las Vegas, NV); Museum of Contemporary Art (Denver, CO); Myhren Gallery, University of Denver (Denver, CO); Brevard Art Museum (Melbourne, FL); Nelson- Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO); Carter Arts Center (Kansas City, MO); Parrish Art Museum (Southampton, NY); and Bluecoat (Liverpool, UK). Mabry’s work is included in the collections of Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, CA), Museum of Contemporary Art (San Diego, CA); Palm Springs Museum of Art (Palm Springs, CA); Phoenix Museum of Art (Phoenix; AZ), Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, TX), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO), Memorial Art Gallery (Rochester, NY); Eskenazi Museum of Art (Bloomington, IN); and Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, GA). Private collections include 176 / Zabludowicz Collection (London, UK), The Rubell Family Collection, (Miami, FL), and Vanhaerents Art Museum (Brussels, Belgium). His work has been the subject of reviews and articles in such domestic and international publications as Art in America, Artforum, Art + Auction, Frieze, Modern Painters, The Art Newspaper, Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. Mabry lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
In accordance with Los Angeles County Covid-19 protocol, Philip Martin Gallery is currently open by appointment only. To make an appointment, or to get additional images, or information please email info@philipmartingallery.com, or call 213-422-9286. Philip Martin Gallery is located at 2712 S. La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90034 in the Culver City area of Los Angeles between Venice Blvd. and Washington Blvd., just south of the 10 Freeway.