NATE BOYCE

PARALLEL SERIES I & II

JULY 24 - AUGUST 27, 2010

Opening reception: Saturday, July 24, from 6 to 8 pm

N O M A Gallery is pleased to present Parallel Series I & II, new works by Nate Boyce. This new body of work consists of two video projections, a 3 monitors installation and prints.

Utilizing serial and permutational systems to structure intuitively developed abstractions, Boyce’s latest work critically re-examines the status of abstraction in the early history of video art and computer animation. Pushing the boundaries of emergent imaging tools while re-purposing the mundane functions of outdated ones, he starts by using consumer grade video mixing hardware to generate resolutely flat geometrical abstractions based on preset patterns used to graphically combine or transition between images. Instead of using the video wipes for their default functions, Boyce feeds the output signal back into itself. These feedback-based compositions are characterized by complex chromatic modulations, where hard edge abstractions recede into elusive color fields. This indexical approach to composition emphasizes the repetition of the framing edge in a way that exploits the inherent properties of the video signal. Using these abstractions as a starting point, he extrudes these flat 2 dimensional images into deep illusionistic space, turning them into optically complex and implicitly sculptural interiors that tease out the latent science-fictional dimensions of modernist abstraction. Rhythmically alternating between the 2d image and its 3 dimensional extrusion, the work stages a dialectical collision between two perceptual modes where modernist opticality collides with more visceral and disorienting experience associated with Op art. This process of extrapolating 2d abstractions into 3d scenes essentially makes abstractions representational. By forcing the 2d abstractions to signify as quasi-thematic sculptural interiors, the work posits a reversal of a modernist directionality in which total abstraction derives from the gradual removal of representation.


Drawing from the methodologies of Structural film, Boyce confronts what he believes to be the conceptual and aesthetic shortcomings of much early video and computer animation. Working against the technological utopianism and emotionally manipulative mode characterizing much of this early work, Boyce evacuates the transcendental aspirations of the psychedelic and attempts to construct a more complex experience that amplifies the enigmatic and affective potential of abstraction while simultaneously using it to reflexively explore the basic mechanisms of perception and consciousness.

For more information please visit http://www.nomagallery.com