UNTITLED #1286: Nau likes the idea of packaging — that an image in a flat picture plane can hold something inside it.
|
Even at his most spontaneous — when he’s sawing random shapes into plasterboard walls and disrupting the surface with various interlocking protuberances, as in the wall cuts at Tufts — Nau is a formalist through and through, and as his scale diminishes, his touch grows lighter. The wall cuts measure as large as 12 by 12 feet, the paintings at around four by four feet, the prints at 20 by 26 inches, and the drawings (graphite, ink, and acrylic) as small as seven by seven inches. The wall cuts are rough, the paintings textured and highly worked, the prints color saturated. The drawings feel as weightless and translucent as tissue paper. The idea of packaging — that an image in a flat picture plane can hold something inside it — is never far removed from Nau’s imagery; it’s another of the contradictory tensions he sets up. But nowhere is that concept more apparent or more tender than in his drawings, which read alternately like delicately wrapped gifts and square bouquets with ribbon-like blossoms topping shafts of back-lit primary colors.
“Paintings” | Artist Foundation Gallery | 516 East 2nd St, South Boston | Closed | “Prints” | Bromfield Gallery: Project Space | 450 Harrison Ave, Boston | Through July 22 | “Boston Drawing Project” | Bernard Toale Gallery | 450 Harrison Ave Boston | Through July 28 | “Wall Cuts” | Tufts University Art Gallery | 40 Talbot Ave, Medford | Through July 30
ADVERTISEMENT
 |