M+B is pleased to present Highlights, Nathaniel Mary Quinn's first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will run from May 13, 2016 through June 25, 2016, with an opening reception on Friday, May 13 from 6 to 8 pm.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn's works on paper exemplify a singular approach to image-making. His figurative compositions are intimate, psychologically-charged portraits influenced by the artist's own past experiences as well as contemporary imagery. Faces are fractured with composite features and spliced with colorful patterns and other graphic elements. Foregoing any preparatory drawings, these works are a result of the artist's intuitive working method and technical virtuosity with the materials. Using charcoal, oil-paint, paint-stick, gouache and oil pastel, Quinn's meticulously rendered compositions appear as if physically collaged from various sourced images.
Quinn's works are deeply informed by his personal history growing up in Chicago's South Side. His childhood experiences at the Robert Taylor Homes, a place of violence, abandonment and poverty, are embedded into his early narrative. Highlights features portraits of individuals from the artist's past, who, through various means, were able to make it out of the notorious public housing project. These compositions give shape to Quinn's memories, the figures from his past finding their way from the subconscious to the paper. In their abstracted bodies and faces, Quinn's personal narrative transforms into a wider exploration on the resiliency of human nature.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn (b. 1977, Chicago) received his BFA from Wabash College and MFA from New York University. Solo exhibitions include Back and Forth at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Past/Present at Pace Gallery, London; and Hybrids at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, New York. Past group exhibitions include Unrealism, organized by Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian, Miami; AIM 23 at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Still/Moving: Photographs and Video Art from the DeWoody Collection, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; and presentations at Frieze London and Art Basel Miami Beach. In New York Magazine's April 2016 issue, Jerry Saltz selected Quinn as one of eleven artists "poised to have breakout years." Quinn has been profiled in a number of other publications, including The Independent (London), Modern Painters, ARTnews, and The Huffington Post. His work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; and Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE, among others. Nathaniel Mary Quinn lives and works in Brooklyn.
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