INTERVIEW MAGAZINE
James Nares
James Nares did not immediately rocket to the top of the New York painting scene. The Englishman turned New Yorker had to go through many phases to get there. He practically had to shoot himself in the foot. (Literally and metaphorically - you know the English and their hunting)...
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TIMEOUT NEW YORK
Seedy That Never Sleeps
Literally and otherwise, James Nares's movies cover a lot of ground. For instance, in his 1975 urban microtravelogue "Roof", the filmmaker, painter and guitarist's seemingly disembodied head drifts eerily through lower Manhattan via a characteristically resourceful camera trick...
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THE VILLAGE VOICE
Empire Strikes Back
Not far into Rome 78, James Nares'sunlikely rendering of a sword-and-sandal costume drama on the minuscule format of Super-8 sound film, two soldiers clad in armor and togas lean against what one might generously imagine to be the walls of the Roman Senate, but is more likely a cheaply renovated East Village apartment...
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ARTFORUM
Repetition Compulsion
In his 1977-78 solo performance Desirium Probe, James nares became a television transmitter. The piece was perfromed twice, in downtown New YorkL once at Joan Jonas's Mercer Street loft, in 1977, and once at the Kitchen, on Wooster Street, in early 1978...
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THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
On a twisting, turning path
Classic New York abstraction is sometimes identified with the big brush stroke. Since the 1980's, James Nares has been parsing that long-established idea. The New York artist's new paintings at the Michael Kohn Gallery show how deft he's become at injecting some life into an otherwise tired cliche...
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THE NEW YORK SUN
The After Life of an Ideal
Where "neoplastic redux" alludes to the afterlife of an ideal, "Action Precision" charts the fate of a gesture. The nine-person group show at Lennon, Weinberg is at once critically tighter and formally more diverse than the somewhat spurrious Harris ensemble. What these artists have in common is neat spontaneity...
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ART NEW ENGLAND
James Nare's Action Paintings and Chronophotographs
Paintings and Photographs, both superb, colorful examples of what Marinetti called "violent gushes of action": One would have thought that action art had exhausted itself by now, but no- James Nares shows that it's alive and well. I had heard that Nares was a muscular, athletic painter, but looking at the photograph of him hard at work in the Paul Kasmin Gallery exhibition catalog, I realized that he is also an acrobat-literally...
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THE NEW YORK SUN
STROBE SNAPS
After artist James Nares suffered an aneurysm, he lost his ability to work for long periods at a time. Unable to go to his studio, he developed new ways of making art at home...
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THE NEW YORK SUN
Performative Strokes
Looking at a James Nares painting is like watching an ocean wave approach the shore- the movement and energy is raw, powerful...
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THE WASHINGTON POST
A Single Stroke of Inspiration
According to French Photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson's definition of the "decisive moment," a great picture is the convergence, in one frame, of a spark of humanity and a perfect composition. A bike cruising by an intriguing staircase at just the right velocity. A fellow skipping over a puddle with both feet in the air...
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THE WASHINGTON POST
James Nares' Beautiful, Seemingly Effortless Flourish at G Fine Art
That late-blooming summer perennial, the group exhibition of August, is in full flower all over town, with a number of gallery surveys devoted to celebration the past, foretelling the future and taking the pulse of today. Just be aware that there are, as always, more than a few weeds among the flowers...
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
James Nares
Using oversize brushes that he makes himself, Mr. Nares lays down a single gestural stroke of color on a blazing white canvas. Each giant stroke, resonant with color like deep mustard, bright blue or plummy cerise, makes a vibrant, wriggly bolt of energy across or down the surface, splattering drops and leaving trails of paint as it goes...
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ART IN AMERICA
James Nares
In his recent exhibition of works from 1999, James Nares again showcased his works as a gestural-abstractionist extraordinaire. Having moved away from his figure-eight work of the 1980's and the "Luminographs" of the early '90s, Nares is now manufacturing works with more distilled, sleek calligraphic style. Despite the shift in style, however, he continues to explore the same issues: movement, gesture and surface...
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
James Nares
James Nares produces a suave spin on that modernist archetype, the big brush stroke. Each Canvas by this New York painter bears a single, vivid storke made all at once with a giant brush. Unlike a brush stroke by, say, Franz Kline, these are strangely disembodied: they are literally big brush strokes, but they also look like illusionary images of big brush strokes...
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ELLE DECOR
James Nares
In many ways, in both his art and his life, the artist James Nares exemplifies certain transformations indigenous to New York's turbulent art world. Born in London in 1953, Nares has lived in New York since 1974 and has been a near constant in the motley downtown scene, making his mark in painting, sculpture, music, photography, and film, as well as in New York's densely imbricated social strata...
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