Nick Alberston
Nick Albertson born 1983, Boston, Massachusetts received his MFA in Photography at Columbia College Chicago. He received his BA in Photography from Bard College in 2006. His work has been exhibited in Chicago, Portland, Seattle, and New York as well as internationally at the Pingyao International Photo Festival.
Rubber bands, plastic straws, paper napkins, and other various everyday household items are the basis of my artistic practice. In my work I strip utilitarian objects of their functions, repurposing them to create complicated, layered compositions. Items usually relegated to the background of our lives are foregrounded for the viewers’ visual examination.
While the images depict objects from the real world, they also use the language of abstraction common to painting and works on paper. Because of this, they can be viewed both as abstract paintings to be taken in as a whole, but also as indexical photographs, the minute details meant to be scrutinized. They can be seen as brush strokes from the artist’s hand, or as faithful renderings of what was in front of the lens at the moment the shutter was opened. The images exist in between these two forms and can fluctuate from one to the other.
Rubber bands, plastic straws, paper napkins, and other various everyday household items are the basis of my artistic practice. In my work I strip utilitarian objects of their functions, repurposing them to create complicated, layered compositions. Items usually relegated to the background of our lives are foregrounded for the viewers’ visual examination.
While the images depict objects from the real world, they also use the language of abstraction common to painting and works on paper. Because of this, they can be viewed both as abstract paintings to be taken in as a whole, but also as indexical photographs, the minute details meant to be scrutinized. They can be seen as brush strokes from the artist’s hand, or as faithful renderings of what was in front of the lens at the moment the shutter was opened. The images exist in between these two forms and can fluctuate from one to the other.