Zach Nader
stage blind
February 17 – March 26, 2017
Opening Friday February 17, 6-9pm

Zach Nader, “tidal pull”, 2017, UV print on Dibond, 25 x 35 inches – Image courtesy of the artist and Microscope Gallery


Installation Views

Microscope Gallery is pleased to present stage blind, the second solo exhibition at the gallery of works by Zach Nader. In new prints on aluminum and single-channel videos – many of which use advertising campaigns as their underlying sources – stage blind considers notions of invisibility as reflected in content as well as with respect to the limits of the human eye and its technological extensions, including the camera, lens, software, and screen.

Nader pushes photographic software editing tools to their extremes to expose the structures and processes lying beneath the highly scripted surfaces of digital images. And, with an interest in the blending of automated systems with the human hand, the artist also incorporates personal marks such as drawings, tracings and erasures.

“I look for ways to set the actors against the image, image against image, software against image, to use software script as mark, software script to overwrite previous marks, and make automated interjections. What new can be created out of existing images and software? What happens when everything is a screen, a site for an image?” – ZN

A new series of UV prints on Dibond continues Nader’s practice of creating alternative possibilities for imagery meant to sell product or lifestyles, allowing the viewer to reconsider them once the sales pitch is absent. People, products and this time color are removed from the images, which are then rephotographed from the computer screen and stitched back together. Dust and fingerprints as well as chromatic bursts and other interference caused by the interaction between the camera and screen situate these primarily black and white interior and exterior landscapes within the electronic display where they originated. The UV printing technique and scale evoke that of advertising signage.

Additionally, three video works make their debuts:

cascade (2017, HD video, 20 minutes) a vertically oriented piece, here projected life-sized, finds a ghostly figure of a man endlessly walking in a looping scene of an indistinct commercial, while other advertisements play through his transparent body in shifting color gradients;

trace shadow (2017, HD video, 4.5 minutes), made entirely from layers of advertisements, reveals the colored outlines of silhouettes of persons and objects from unrelated narratives – which collide with and morph into each other on an otherwise white screen – as windows into hidden realms beneath the surface;

stage blind (2016, HD video, 3 minutes), the title work, featuring footage shot by the artist with his camera placed in extreme lighting conditions and later altered frame-by-frame, draws comparisons to the experience of standing under bright lights on stage, able to catch only glimpses of the wider surroundings.

Zach Nader, still from “trace shadow”, 2017, single-channel HD video, 4 minutes 40 seconds – Image courtesy of the artist and Microscope Gallery

_
Zach Nader’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including during a month-long nightly video installation on 23 advertisement billboards as part of Midnight Moment, New York’s Times Square; at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; and Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel, Switzerland, among many others. A solo exhibition of his work is currently on view at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham through March 18th, 2017. The artist has been a resident at The Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation in Brooklyn, NY and a featured speaker at ICP-Bard, New York, NY and Bard at Simon Rock, Great Barrington, MA among others. Nader was born in Dallas, Texas and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

stage blind runs from Friday February 17 through March 26, 2017. Opening Reception Friday February 17, 6-9pm. Press Preview Friday February 17, 5-6pm. Gallery Hours: Thursday through Monday 1-6pm.

For inquiries please contact the gallery at inquiries@microscopegallery.com or by phone at 347.925.1433.