NYAB Event - Nicholas Nixon "Here and Now"

Nicholas Nixon "Here and Now"

Pace MacGill

This event has ended.

The exhibition is Nixon’s fourth solo show at the gallery and introduces a selection of recent photographs taken between 2010 and 2012. "Here and Now" highlights Nicholas Nixon’s continued interest in the large format camera as a medium of expression. Taken throughout the United States and France over the course of one year, the exhibition features a series of 11 x 14 inch and 16 x 20 inch gelatin silver prints that explore birth, death, and human intimacy within the scope of the natural world.

Utilizing the great legibility of the analog negative, Nixon focuses on photography’s humanistic potential. "Here and Now" juxtaposes young mothers—whose babies gape at the camera’s lens—with wrinkled centenarians to depict the cycle of life, and examines the evolution of the body from its earliest stages to its latest with tenderness, respect, and a tangible sense of discovery. Alongside images of newborns and the elderly, Here and Now presents a series of intimate self-portraits of Nixon and his wife, Bebe. Closely cropped and hardly generous, the Nixons fade into overlapping forms. Their
wrinkled follicular skin and wiry grey hairs weave in and out of focus, and they merge into each other’s bodies like two timeworn mammals embracing. These macroscopic images celebrate the camera’s descriptive capabilities and candidly portray the physical effects of age, devotion, and cohabitation after thirty-nine years of marriage.

The exhibition, respecting the artist’s interest in the co-existence of all organic elements, also includes rich landscapes of wheat and flora that serve as a foil to Nixon’s fleshy nudes. Referencing the poetry of Whitman, to the impassiveness of Mother Nature, and reminds the viewer that, unlike the body, nature will renew itself in perpetuity. Humble and courageously sentimental, "Here and Now"
suggests life’s interconnectedness. Nixon intentionally avoids a bleak notion of mortality by placing the human being safely within the continuum of the natural world and allows meaning to develop from the effortless interplay between images and viewer interpretation.