Thursday, March 03, 2011

Nathan Monk In NoSpace: A Collaboration with Tré Reising

Indianapolis artists Tré Reising and Nathan Monk recently completed a collaboration resulting in the exhibition Nathan Monk In NoSpace. The exhibition, featuring all-new work, features yarn installations on gallery walls by Reising and responsive mixed media collage work by Monk. Building on the conceptual basis and momentum ofhis 2009 solo exhibition NoSpace, Reising elected to simultaneously expand upon and contract the ideas from that exhibition.




The expansion occurs by bringing in a collaborator. Monk and Reising were not acquainted before the collaboration, but Reising was familiar with Monk's collage work and approached him to see if he was interested in working on a collaborative exhibition. The contraction is due to the complete elimination of painting on Reising's part; his role here is to set forth "rules" that Monk must follow by creating a separate "space" within the gallery through the illusion of additional space that is created by geometric shapes made from yarn. Monk followed the "rules" by creating original mixed media works incorporating painting and collage media onto found wood cut to Reising's specified shapes and dimensions. The works succeed in appearing to jut out or fade away out of or into the illusionary space of Reising's confines.

Images courtesy of Tré Reising

The pairing of the two artists is certainly as odd as it is unexpected, but they pull off the collaboration with relative ease. The zany, surreal imagery of Monk's collages blends well with Reising's Sandback-esque experiments with yarn and space. Both artists share a penchant for bright colors and bold shapes, and Reising's bold lines "frame" Monk's otherwise bizarrely shaped mixed media works in a way that corresponds to the artists' unique sense of logic and space. The exhibition runs from March 4-31, 2011 at the Benjamin Franklin Gallery of Wheeler Arts Community.

The artists explain their new exhibition in the following video:

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