Nick Lawrence : Notes from Underground : A 25-Year Survey October 14, 2008

Pierre Menard Gallery presents Nick Lawrence : Notes from Underground : A 25-Year Survey. 25 September-7 November, with a closing reception/artist talk on 7 November, 6-9 pm. Regular gallery hours: open daily, 12-8 pm. Free and open to the public. Pierre Menard Gallery, 10 Arrow Street, Cambridge. For more information, 617-868-2033 or www.pierremenardgallery.com.

Pierre Menard Gallery is pleased to announce a mid-career retrospective of the work of Nick Lawrence, including paintings, sculpture, work in mixed media, work on paper and print work in several media. Lawrence (b. 1960) is a powerful and prolific artist working in a self-described both figurative and abstract expressionist idiom, drawing upon primitive sources, myth and folklore to delineate a view of the world which he has elaborated from consistent principles over a period of three decades. Lawrence's faith is in the earth, and he sees its denizens and their works as merely ever-evolving expressions of its life: "physis" is everything, with no remainder; nothing is foreign; everything is integral to the whole.

The work is bold, assertive and all-embracing, "mystical and timeless," in the words of one reviewer - not unlike Australian aboriginal "Dreamtime" sand paintings. Other notable influences include modern German Expressionists such as Max Beckmann, Franz Marc and the Blau Reiter; French painters Dubuffet, Roualt, and Nolde; Italian 80's neo-expressionists Clemente, Chia, and Cucci; and more recently German artists Albert Oehlen and Peter Doig. But the world he creates is very much his own: a narrative forest of symbols at the same time that it is, in its larger scope, a catalogue of the simplest, most straight-forward and most pervasive things in the world and in human life. Sea, earth, sky, sun, animals, plants, men, women, houses, ships, even automobiles -- as well as love, violence, tragedy, war, jealousy, music, humor, joy, misunderstanding, technology, and extinction - all play out in magnificent, fervent orchestrations in these lyrical narratives. The work is dense, yet uncluttered. And it is dense with meaning, yet uncluttered with conceptual apparatus.

Strong of line, sometimes bold in color, at others saturated in the tones of earth, there is a clear consistency of iconography and style even among the many evolutions that are evident across the decades – and more than 20 distinct bodies of work are represented in the exhibition. The spirit that infuses the work is primordial, seeing the world "subspecie aeternitas", accustomed to death and the passing of pleasure, but at the same time constantly inspired by the possibility of joy. The seasons change, life expires and death folds into life again, and all the while we suffer the most extreme pangs, woes and satisfactions, and they all pass into air, and dust, and thence into life again.

For all the wild profusion of its imagery, the work is calm and balanced, like nature, like the economy of a teeming jungle. As in primitive art, man, earth and animal meld into each other, shifting, partaking each of the other, their struggles only a dance. In Lawrence's work the dance encompasses not only the "natural order," but the whole world of technology, emotion and human structures as well, interacting with nature, arriving briefly at a precarious balance, exploding, perhaps, and coming together again in transformed, or perhaps transmogrified new incarnations.

The author of over 40 solo and 40 group shows both here and abroad, Lawrence received his BA from Dartmouth College, followed by graduate work at the Ruskin School in Oxford, England, and a summer at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He is the recipient of numerous grants and residencies, including an Artist Foundation Fellowship in Massachusetts for works on paper, and an NEA Visual Artist Fellowship. He is the owner and founder of 15 year-old DNA gallery in Provincetown, MA, 5-year old Freight+Volume in Chelsea, NYC, as well as publisher of the artist magazine "Freight+Volume". He is also owner and founder of Nick's Moving Company in Somerville, Ma, which for over 20 years he claims has "supported my artistic endeavors".

Official Website: http://www.pierremenardgallery.com