Nick Van Woert
06 Jun - 30 Jul 2013
NICK VAN WOERT
Haruspex
6 June - 30 July 2013
Yvon Lambert is pleased to present Haruspex, Nick van Woert’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.
For this exhibition, Nick van Woert will present new works inspired by the theme of haruspicy, an Etruscan and Roman religious practice which consisted of interpreting omens or divining the future by inspecting the entrails of sacrificial animals. Like a haruspex, the artist has chosen to reveal and examine certain aspects of our society, just as the entrails of animals were considered to be the reflection of the economic and geographical situation of the milieu in which they were reared.
Through the use of building or DIY materials, Nick van Woert mixes, compresses and exhibits or arranges in layers heterogeneous elements from the industrial world, salvaged pieces of wood, cat litter, and parts of plastic toys. Like an alchemist or archaeologist of the present, he creates new materials with varied colours, textures and matter, to which he adds an industrial dimension by shaping them in the form of beams or lumber and placing them, one on top of the other, on metallic rails.
For this exhibition, Nick van Woert will also make use of an anthropomorphic sculpture, purchased on an Internet site dedicated to home and garden ware. This sculpture will be cut in two and one half will be melted down to make hammers, sledge hammers, axes and crowbars. This part of the sculpture will be hung on the wall by its flat side like a tool in a store or a workshop. The other half of the sculpture, the emptied-out part, will remain lying on the ground.
Once again, the artist draws his inspiration from forms traditionally associated with art history, as well as ancient or classical sculpture, all the while questioning the functions of statuary art (ornamental, social or political). Nick van Woert developed in the same time a new and personal vocabulary that has been heavily influenced by architecture – his initial course of study – and the varied landscape of the state of Nevada where he was born, somewhere between arid desert and an excessive or outrageous urban space.
Nick van Woert (b. 1979, Reno, Nevada) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has been featured in exhibitions at venues including Yvon Lambert, Paris; Yvon Lambert, New York; FIAF FALL FESTIVAL, French Institute Alliance Française, New York; Collection Lambert, Avignon, France; Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; Nudashank, Baltimore, MD; and Fourteen30, Portland, OR.
Haruspex
6 June - 30 July 2013
Yvon Lambert is pleased to present Haruspex, Nick van Woert’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.
For this exhibition, Nick van Woert will present new works inspired by the theme of haruspicy, an Etruscan and Roman religious practice which consisted of interpreting omens or divining the future by inspecting the entrails of sacrificial animals. Like a haruspex, the artist has chosen to reveal and examine certain aspects of our society, just as the entrails of animals were considered to be the reflection of the economic and geographical situation of the milieu in which they were reared.
Through the use of building or DIY materials, Nick van Woert mixes, compresses and exhibits or arranges in layers heterogeneous elements from the industrial world, salvaged pieces of wood, cat litter, and parts of plastic toys. Like an alchemist or archaeologist of the present, he creates new materials with varied colours, textures and matter, to which he adds an industrial dimension by shaping them in the form of beams or lumber and placing them, one on top of the other, on metallic rails.
For this exhibition, Nick van Woert will also make use of an anthropomorphic sculpture, purchased on an Internet site dedicated to home and garden ware. This sculpture will be cut in two and one half will be melted down to make hammers, sledge hammers, axes and crowbars. This part of the sculpture will be hung on the wall by its flat side like a tool in a store or a workshop. The other half of the sculpture, the emptied-out part, will remain lying on the ground.
Once again, the artist draws his inspiration from forms traditionally associated with art history, as well as ancient or classical sculpture, all the while questioning the functions of statuary art (ornamental, social or political). Nick van Woert developed in the same time a new and personal vocabulary that has been heavily influenced by architecture – his initial course of study – and the varied landscape of the state of Nevada where he was born, somewhere between arid desert and an excessive or outrageous urban space.
Nick van Woert (b. 1979, Reno, Nevada) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has been featured in exhibitions at venues including Yvon Lambert, Paris; Yvon Lambert, New York; FIAF FALL FESTIVAL, French Institute Alliance Française, New York; Collection Lambert, Avignon, France; Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; Nudashank, Baltimore, MD; and Fourteen30, Portland, OR.