Nurse Log, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21 Palma, 2023.
Nurse Log, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21 Palma, 2023.
Nurse Log, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21 Palma, 2023.
Nurse Log, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21 Palma, 2023.
Nurse Log, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21 Palma, 2023.
Nurse Log, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21 Palma, 2023.
Nurse Log, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21 Palma, 2023.
Nurse Log, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21 Palma, 2023.
Nurse Log, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21 Palma, 2023.
Nurse Log, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21 Palma, 2023.
Graze, 2022
Oil on hemp
104 x 76 cm
Waft, 2022
Oil on hemp
107 x 91 cm
Sprawl, 2022
Oil on hemp
91 x 107 cm
Jag, 2022
Oil on hemp
81 x 71 cm
Stub, 2022
Oil on hemp
81 x 71 cm
Twine, 2022
Oil on hemp
64 x 71 cm
Skerry, 2022
Oil on hemp
64 x 71 cm
Wedge, 2022
Oil on jute
64 x 71 cm
Calf, 2022
Oil on hemp
64 x 71 cm
Nurse Log, 2022
Oil on hemp
79 x 91 cm
Potter’s Rock, 2022
Oil on hemp
76 x 84 cm
Lier, 2022
Oil on hemp
79 x 91 cm
“How to think about what exists outside human thought?”[1]
A nurse log is one that sacrifices itself. With its fall, the dead tree enriches the soil as it decomposes and allows for new life around it. Sometimes the roots of other trees and plants grow and develop on it. Life and death are but an alternating cycle based on the transformation of matter.
According to Bourriaud, “nature becomes inorganic when it is inserted into the cycle of human activities”. In other words, “a tree is organic until a log is produced from it”[2]. But then, what could man become when inserted into the cycle of natural processes? We lack the quality of shifting between the organic and the inorganic, because these concepts are simply categories of thought that belong to the human world. The question, then, would rather be, how to think what exists outside that world?
This is a question to which the new exhibition “Nurse Log” by American artist Nat Meade can perhaps shed some light through painting and the poetic use of allegories. In his brightly coloured and textured paintings, we observe the opposite approach: instead of cutting down a tree trunk, Meade has removed the man’s body to leave only his head exposed to nature. The heads of his new characters rest peacefully, but at the same time tragically, on the grass or inside water.
Their serene faces and entangled hair with the tree’s branches reveal not only a process of organic decomposition, but also the loss of their roots. Nature’s mercy welcomes and embraces them when they have lost the roots that connected them to the ground and have themselves become a nurse log.
In the central work of the exhibition, “Clout”, a piece of cloth hangs from a cut tree. Emerging amidst pale reddish tones are the blurred features of a ghostly figure that faces the viewer with its eyes and mouth open. What we do not see are the roots sinking into the earth. On a symbolic level, roots connect us to our foundation, origins and myths; what can replace them if not the ability to create new stories that grow like rhizomes? In another of the paintings in the exhibition, a yellow log decays while new shoots of grass appear in its hollow interior. In the background, a human face resembling a hill seems to overflow and spread out… It does so with its eyes closed and at ease, becoming something else at last: moving towards a post-human horizon.
Esmeralda Gómez Galera
[1] Bourriaud, Nicolas. Inclusiones: estéticas del capitaloceno. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo Editora. Pág. 92. (Spanish edition)
[2] Ibíd. Pág. 150. (Spanish edition)
EN / ES
“Bad Luck Buddy”, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21.
“Bad Luck Buddy”, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21.
Pop, 2020. Oil on hemp. 60.96 x 45.72 cm
“Bad Luck Buddy”, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21.
“Bad Luck Buddy”, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21.
“Bad Luck Buddy”, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21.
Floater, 2021. Oil on linen. 40.64 x 35.56 cm
Knot Wood, 2020. Oil on hemp. 45.72 x 50.8 cm
Knot Wood, 2020. Oil on jute. 38.1 x 33.02 cm
“Bad Luck Buddy”, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21.
Cry Drops, 2021. Oil on hemp. 53.34 x 53.34 cm
“Bad Luck Buddy”, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21.
“Bad Luck Buddy”, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21.
Ajar, 2020. Oil on hemp. 40.64 x 50.8 cm
Graze, 2020. Oil on hemp. 45.72 x 50.8 cm
Log, 2020. Oil on hemp. 45.72 x 50.8 cm
“Bad Luck Buddy”, solo exhibition by Nat Meade. Installation view at L21.
Gust, 2018. Casein on hemp. 60.96 x 45.72 cm
BAD LUCK BUDDY
What tree do you want to be when you are older, when you are no longer, when your matter is no longer yours? In fact, did it ever belong to you? An irrelevant question now that the particles that once formed your body distance themselves from one another and submit to entropy, the breath that kept you alive is carried away by the same wind that moves the branches and leaves.
Nat Meade’s paintings are like small gems – contained in size but with shimmer and shadows deep within. They contain transcendental questions – those of life, death and nature, those of entropy and the dissolution of the body. The close-ups of his characters, all of whom are men with long hair and beards, bring us moments of existential intimacy in which the presence of the elements stands out: earth, air, fire and water are all around us, taking different forms and giving us the context in which these experiences take place.
At times, Nat Meade’s characters lack a body and are just a head with closed eyes, but a head that is gently gathered and supported by everything that surrounds it. They are timeless, just born and at the same time already old. What do those closed eyes see? It is difficult to say, but it is clear that they live in a vast inner world as much as they live in the outer world. Nature protects and envelops them, or, in time, becomes the place of their inevitable decay. Their relationship with nature is intimate and complex. In the artist’s words, “natural forms and forces are a way of indicating that the world is happening to and around them- wind is blowing by, flowers and leaves swirling around. Also, time is passing.”1
Time passes in the small gems. A face sinks into the grass until it disappears into it. The texture of the beard and the bark of a fallen tree merge in the same landscape. The wind carries away the exhalation in the form of white smoke and makes the flowers petals dance. Blue tears fall from half-open eyes while, elsewhere, a reddish face with a serene gaze submerges itself into a lake that returns its own reflections… Even if the characters sometimes appear to have forgotten their own bodies or have gotten rid of them, it is impossible to ignore the vibrant materiality of these paintings. The artist often chooses media such as wood, hemp, linen or jute. In other words, resilient surfaces that withstand the process of appearance and disappearance of the images, which take shape little by little, as if in waves, emerging from the process.
Donna Haraway recently wrote that we are children of compost and that, much as we must learn to live, we must also learn to die:
“Mixed-up times are overflowing with both pain and joy (…) The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present. Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places.”2
Destruction, after all, is a condition for creation, not only in art, but also in nature
– a universe of mycelium feeds from the decay of the forest. Nat Meade’s paintings aim at said task, gathering together emotions that are sometimes contradictory while providing us, through our contemplation of them, with a thick present and a quiet place, in which perhaps, just perhaps, it is possible to learn to live and to die.
1
Nat Meade, unpublished interview with the artist, Juanuary 2021.
2
Haraway, Donna. Seguir con el problema: generar parentescos en el Chthuluceno. Bilbao: Consonni, 2019. Págs. 19-20. (Spanish edition)
Esmeralda Gómez Galera
EN / ES
Nat Meade (b. 1975, Greenfield, Massachusetts, Grew up in Portland, Oregon) is a Brooklyn-based painter and educator who uses his work to reflect on the complex feelings that surround the experience of moving through different phases of life. The figures in Meade’s paintings become stand-ins for himself in his investigation of the experience of becoming an adult, husband, and parent, each character viewed through the dual lens of self-scrutiny and societal expectation. Meade received his BFA from the University of Oregon and his MFA from Pratt Institute.
His work has shown in solo exhibitions including “A Hole is for Looking Through”, Taymour Grahne Gallery (London, 2022); “Nothing, Happens for a Reason”, Hesse Flatow Gallery (New York, 2022) and “Never Learn Not to Cease to Exist”, Honey Ramka, Brooklyn (New York, 2022), and in group shows at Pierogi Gallery (New York, 2022), L21 LAB (Palma de Mallorca, 2022), The Hole Gallery (Copenhagen, 2021), and The Wunderwall (Brussels, 2021) amongst many other.
Meade’s practice has been reviewed in publications such as Artforum, Juxtapoz, The Boston Globe, and Hyperallergic. He attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture 2009, the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in 2016, the Siena Art Institute in 2018, and the James Castle House Summer Residency in Boise, Idaho in summer 2021.
EDUCATION
2009 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Skowhegan, Maine (US)
2007 Master of Fine Arts. Pratt Institute, New York City (US)
2001 Bachelor of Fine Arts. University of Oregon, Oregon (US)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023
Nurse Log. L21 Palma, Palma (ES)
2022
A Hole is for Looking Through. Taymour Grahne Gallery, London (UK)
Nothing, Happens for a Reason. Hesse Flatow Gallery, New York (US)
2021
Bad Luck Buddy. L21 Gallery, Mallorca (ES)
2018
Never Learn Not to Cease to Exist. Honey Ramka, Brooklyn, New York (US)
2017
The Wait. Schneider Museum, Ashland, Oregon (US)
All Arounders. Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon (US)
2016
Undershadow. Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon (US)
2014
Pecker Tracks. Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon (US)
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023
CA’N BOOM!. L21 Gallery and Ca’n Marquès, Palma (ES)
CAN ART IBIZA 2023. L21 Gallery, Ibiza (ES)
Entre Cajas. L21 Home, Palma (ES)
2021
Paperworks Vol II. NBB Gallery, Berlin (DE)
Phase Three- East Hampton Hole, The Hole Gallery, East Hampton (US)
Enter Art Fair. The Hole Gallery, Copenhagen (DK)
The Symbolists: Les Fleurs du Mal, co-curated by Nicole Kaack and Karen Hesse Flatow. Hesse Flatow Gallery New York (US)
Melancholympics, curated by Sasha Bogojev. The Wunderwall, Brussels (BE)
2020
First, Second, Third Person. Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (US)
2019
Biophilia, curated by Emily Burns. Unpaved Gallery, Yucca Valley, California (US)
Selections: Works from Fine Arts Faculty. President’s Office Gallery, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York (US)
!QUIRK. Kathryn Markel Fine Art, New York (US)
Distance: Works on Paper by Skowhegan Alumni, curated by Betsy Alwin and Steve Locke. Dorsky Curatorial Projects, Queens New York (US)
2018
Buddy System. Deanna Evans Projects, Brooklyn, New York (US)
Interrupting Lines, curated by Brock Brake. Pt. 2 Gallery, Oakland, California (US)
I Remember You Well- Part 2, curated by Adam Noack. Galerie Eigenheim, Weimar (DE)
2017
I Remember You Well, curated by Adam Noack. Galerie Eigenheim, Berlin (DE)
Published by the Artist, curated by Angela Conant and Grayson Cox. International Print Center, New York (US)
Crunch, curated by Matthew Fisher. The Breeder Gallery, Athens (GR)
2016
Plus One. Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (US)
Heads Up Game, curated by Suzanne Dittenber. Metcalf Gallery, Taylor University, Upland, Indiana (US)
Casual Deviant. Castledrone, Boston, Massachusetts (US)
2015
Befana’s Secret Booty. Orgy Park, Brooklyn, New York (US)
Dogs and Cats, curated by Nancy Grimes. Mark Miller Gallery, New York (US)
Paintings in Trees. Peoples Garden, Brooklyn, New York (US)
2014
Pierogi XX: 20th anniversary Exhibition. Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (US)
Wretch. Honey Ramka Gallery, Brooklyn (US)
Congregation, curated by Sheila Pepe. Gallery 106 Green, Brooklyn, New York (US)
2013
Unhinged, Summer Group Show. Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (US)
2011
12 Painters 12 Hours. Rogue Space, New York (US)
2010
Five From Brooklyn. Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon (US)
I Know What You Did Last Summer, Saint Cecilia’s Convent, Brooklyn, NewYork (US)
A Separate Peace-curated by Shane McAdams, McNeil Project Space, New York (US)
Artist of the Week, Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (US)
2009
Winter Group Show 2009, Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon (US)
PUBLICATIONS
2021
Brooklyn Rail, The Symbolists: Les Fleurs du Mal, review by Elizabeth Buhe, March
2020
Punch, Limited edition, Esopus Foundation
2019
Art Forum, review by Tod Lippy, March
2018
Art Maze Magazine, Summer Issue 9
2017
Juxtapoz Magazine, Evolution of a Man, Sasha Bogojev
Maake Magazine, Issue 5
Hyperallergic, From Interference Paint to Prompt-Driven Portraits, a Trip to Dumbo Open Studios, Seph Rodney, May 15
Two coats of Paint, May 16
2015
Art and Everything After, One Question, Steve Locke, June 4
The Boston Globe, May 25
2014
The Portland Mercury, Art Walkin’, A.L. Adams, Feb 12
2012
Tin House: Winter Reading, December 2012, Issue 54, Cover
The Berlin Journal, Spring 2012, Number 22, On Lonliness: The unbearable lightness of being alone, pages 18-23
Watercolor Magazine, Winter 2012, Morphing Memories, pages 84-91