NATALIE CHEUNG and NATE LEWIS Reviewed in The Washington Post

WASHINGTON POST ~ In the galleries ~ April 21, 2017

 Natalie Cheung: Increments in Time and Nate Lewis: Tensions in Tapestries On view through April 26 at Morton Fine Art, 1781 Florida Ave. NW. 202-628-2787. mortonfineart.com.

Natalie Cheung’s “31 Hours,” cyanotype on paper, on view through April 26 at Morton Fine Art. (Natalie Cheung/Courtesy of Morton Fine Art)

To judge by their titles, change must be the subject of Natalie Cheung’s cyanotypes. Each picture in her Morton Fine Art show, “Increments in Time,” is named after a period of as little as one and as many as 76 hours. This is how long it took water to evaporate from the photographic paper, yielding studies in blue, black and white.  The D.C. artist has turned the process, once used for architectural blueprints, into something abstract and unpredictable. Her pictures may resemble Rorschach tests and microscopic views, but all they truly illustrate is the process by which they were made. Their poetry is an accident of chemicals and duration.

Nate Lewis’s “Signals II,” hand-sculpted paper photo print, at Morton Fine Art. (Nate Lewis/Courtesy of Morton Fine Art)

To Nate Lewis, whose “Tensions in Tapestries” also is at Morton, the African American body is a landscape to be transformed. He cuts and scrapes black-and-white photographic portraits, removing pigment while adding patterns and flocked textures. The effect recalls African weaving and skin embellishment, but also reflects the influence of the D.C. artist’s job as an intensive-care nurse, seeking to heal the most damaged. In pieces such as “Funk and Spine,” the surface of a woman’s body is almost entirely remade, yet sinew, bone and essence endure.

– Mark Jenkins

Natalie Cheung: Increments in Time and Nate Lewis: Tensions in Tapestries On view through April 26 at Morton Fine Art, 1781 Florida Ave. NW. 202-628-2787. mortonfineart.com.

VICTOR EKPUK’s art included in Chinua Achebe’s THINGS FALL APART 60th edition

THINGS FALL APART 60th Anniversary

It’s a great honor to have VICTOR EKPUK’s art included in Chinua Achebe’s THINGS FALL APART 60th edition. He also made illustrations for the cover of the sequels NO LONGER AT EASE and ARROW OF GOD. As well as a new classic edition AFRICAN TRILOGY.

Increments of Time: New Works by NATALIE CHEUNG

 53 Hours, 2017, 30″x 44″, cyanotype on paper

We are excited to give you a sneak preview of new works by NATALIE CHEUNG from her upcoming solo exhibition Increments in Time.

Increments in Time features Cheung’s cyanotype mappings of evaporation. Cheung’s cyanotypes are reduced to the essential elements of capturing and recording light; light, paper, chemical reaction and chance which hearken back to the scientific roots of the medium. The prints record the transition from liquid to blueprint. The title of each work indicates the hours in which it took water to evaporate completely from the paper. What remains is the aftermath of an event, a map. This work examines the way in which nature perpetually creates patterns, seemingly random and chaotic yet with regularity and repetition.

Natalie was born in Falls Church, Virginia. She received her MFA in Photography from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and her BFA in Photography from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally; she has been profiled in Washington Spaces Magazine and has her work is represented in numerous collections including the Museum of Fine Art Houston and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Cheung has taught at the George Washington University as well as the Corcoran College of Art + Design and Temple University, Tyler School of Art. This marks her second solo exhibition at Morton Fine Art.

You can also see more of Natalie’s available works HERE.

 31 Hours, 2017, 30″x 44″, cyanotype on paper

76 Hours, 2017, 30″x 44″, cyanotype on paper

 1 Hour, 2017, 5″x 7″, cyanotype on paper

2 Hours, 2017, 5″x 7″, cyanotype on paper

 3 Hours (b), 2017, 8″x 9″, cyanotype on paper

 3 Hours, 2017, 8″x 9″, cyanotype on paper

 6 Hours, 2017, 8″x 9″, cyanotype on paper

New Works by NATE LEWIS

Mobile, hand sculpted paper photo print, 40″ x 26″​

We are excited to announce new works by Washington, DC based artist NATE LEWIS. They are from his latest series Tensions in Tapestries. 

 

We all have a lens through which we see. Our lens is distilled by our patterns of seeing and thinking which continually refines our lens. The lens we come to form becomes our filter.

Using figurative and portrait style images I hand-sculpt patterns and textures on to single sheets of paper that reveal unseen tensions on and within bodies representative of the past, present, and future – the physical and the spiritual, the tangible and intangible. 

Internal, as well as external influences come to refine our patterns of thinking, seeing, interacting and loving. Through the use of presence and absence, textures and distortion, I aim to challenge the filters we hold that dictate our views and our actions.

Through an attentive, intentional process of sculpting patterns and terrains of texture on bodies, I seek for this work to mirror the intentionality and consistency it can take in ones patterns of thinking and seeing to hold an empathetic lens.

-NATE LEWIS, 2017

 

Nathaniel Lewis grew up in Beaver Falls, near Pittsburgh, Pa. Born 1985, Nate benefited from the cultural mix of his Trinidad-born father who was raised in Brooklyn and his white American-born mother, raised in Philadelphia. He graduated from VCU with his BSN and has been a practicing critical care nurse for the past five years as well as professional fine artist. Tensions in Tapestries is Nate’s second solo exhibition at Morton Fine Art.

 

Please find images of the new works below. You can see more of Nate’s available works HERE.

​Thrice, hand sculpted paper photo print, 26″ x 40″

​Cloaked but Absent III, hand sculpted paper photo print, 40″ x 26″

Funk and Spine, hand sculpted paper photo print​, 40″ x 26″

​Archaic Pages, hand sculpted paper photo print, 18″ x 22″

Clenched, ​hand sculpted paper photo print, 14″ x 18″

Conductor, hand sculpted paper photo print, 20″ x 22″

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Dignity II, hand sculpted paper photo print, 22″ x 20″

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Signals II, ​hand sculpted paper photo print, 24″ x 26″

​Unbalanced and Clear, hand sculpted paper photo print, 24″ x 26″