Putting it Together Again: New Work by AJ NadelVivek Narayanan |
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| In his most recent work, New York-based AJ Nadel continues to explore popular representation, sexuality and the ways in which we look at and respond to the human form. Nadel’s unusual and intriguing photo collages interweave a number of different materials colored paper, photocopied documents, toner powder, Polaroid and emulsion transfers and thus offer to the eye a rich and palimpsest-like texture. His new series, however, does not draw anymore from a number of sources (such as magazines, etc.) but uses only one female subject in a number of provocative poses; and each collage offers multiple perspectives on the same picture. |
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| These new works are not a return to innocent portraiture; the poses are highly referential, and Nadel’s model is an actress-friend who is self-conscious about her own representation in the context of ubiquitous, still-current ideas about female sexuality. Yet, they are a (possibly temporary) shift in the artist’s process away from found images to considering how "direct" seeing can still be mediated. Nadel’s work has always engaged with popular culture, but has never resorted to condescension or total irony: there is an earnestness to his explorations that wants to transcend our age. And, if he sometimes superimposes image on image, emulsion on emotion, showing up a hundred different kinds of seeing, the end result always possesses a striking clarity and focus. He is obviously an artist of our fragmented present, but he is also concerned with coherence in the midst of that fragmentation. Nadel’s new work, then, makes sense as part of this trajectory, focusing further as it does on a single "live" studio subject, distorted and reconfigured with textured and perplexing variety.
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Putting it Together Again: New Work by AJ Nadel – Vivek Narayanan
Date posted: June 14, 2006
Author: jolanta
