NICK LAWRENCE

Urban grunge and tribal imagery

By NISHA MAXWELL

del.ico.us | digg it! | reddit!

print | email | 1 Comments

On the left was Nixon; on the right, Elvis. The middle figure rang several bells. “Is that Jesus or Charles Manson?” I asked Nathan Censullo, director of the Pierre Menard Gallery. “That’s the artist, Nick Lawrence.”

Lawrence’s Notes From the Underground: 1982-2007, A 25-Year Survey is comprised of over 100 pieces, packed millimeters apart in the beautiful, wood-paneled space, making up “really just a sample” of the work Lawrence has produced in the past 25 years.

Thankfully, due to the amount of pieces, his work is organized in series, each with a distinct concept and material makeup. “He really spent a lot of time investigating it,” Censullo says of his technical development, “and crossing different media platforms.”

For the Dali fetishists out there, The Deep Time: Underground Series is a tantalizing combo of collage, varnish and golem-esque Greek tragedy references. For the pulp fetishists, the House Series uses the recognizable five-slab symbol for a house containing all sorts of dark, intriguing things: It begins with houses exuding very separate personalities through abstract and representational tribal language. Eventually, the houses become brothels, indicated by the title addition, “Bordello.”

The Scroll Series is an Africana-themed collection, done in oil-stick and acrylic on paper. The settings are always landscapes with native people of different lands in the foreground. On the horizon, there is generally an apocalyptic scenario, but the coloring is so bright and cheerful that the apocalypse seems just fine.

An extremely visually pleasing but conceptually blurry collection is the Nuclear Fission Series. Each piece has a creature drawn in ink on the inside of a thick organic border. The bright and muddy yellow tones evoke battery acid and mildew. Constructed from driftwood, straw, thick paint and lacquered ink drawings, the material density of each piece creates a sculptural artifact aesthetic reminiscent of Robert Rauschenberg.

Dig deep for dense conceptual messages—they’re in there. Each piece comes together thematically to create a primordial soup of pop monsters and abstract shapes.

This Friday, the gallery will open their doors and pop their bottles to facilitate the public’s experience of this crazy-gorgeous show with a closing reception. We even get to hear from the artist himself: Lawrence will speak about his prolific career and hopefully help us parse through the dense symbolism used in these works. It should be an all-sensory pleasure fest, focusing on the frontal lobe.

NICK LAWRENCE: NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND: 1982-2007

CLOSING RECEPTION FRIDAY 11.7.08

6PM-9PM/FREE ARTIST TALK/TOUR 6PM-7PM

PIERRE MENARD GALLERY

10 ARROW ST., HARVARD SQ. CAMBRIDGE

617.868.2033

PIERREMENARDGALLERY.COM