James Nares: ROAD PAINT

Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to present ROAD PAINT, a selection of new paintings by James Nares, on view from 8 May – 22 June 2013 at 293 Tenth Avenue in New York. These works continue the artist’s ongoing kinetic investigations—exploring the form, direction, rhythm, and repetition of objects in motion. The result of a completely new technique developed by Nares exclusively for this exhibition, this unique practice seeks to capture movement’s own moment of creation, its own primal genesis.

Recalling the extremely slow frame rate of STREET, Nares slows down the processes of action and creation in his ROAD PAINT series in order to fastidiously record the minute nuances of movement. Isolating the idiosyncratic in the industrial, Nares utilizes a mechanical road striper to run extremely viscous white paint across the black ground of his canvases. Within the fresh strokes, tiny glass beads known as microspheres are deposited, producing an iridescent effect. This highly mechanical but also poetic process creates paintings that inventively echo the organic imagery of his well-known brushstroke paintings, as both uniquely record the passage of the mark-maker through both space and time.

Nares’ film STREET has recently been exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum (2012), the Saint Louis Art Museum (2012–2013), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville (2013). STREET, is currently on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York alongside more than 60 works selected by Nares from the Metropolitan’s diverse collections, March 5 – May 27, 2013.

James Nares was born in London in 1953 and currently lives and works in New York. In 2008, Anthology Film Archives hosted a complete retrospective of his films and videos. His work is included in a number of public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.