Art Madrid'23 – Nicholas Nixon: the story of time in images

Nicholas Nixon. “Hyde Park Avenue, Boston”, 1982.

 

 

The exhibition puts together more than 200 images representing the whole career of this author, born in Detroit in 1947. Nixon became internationally famous for his work dedicated to “The Brown Sisters”. Throughout four decades, the photographer captured how years passed by in this family, from 1975 to 2014, condensing this way two of the main topics that interest him the most: time and human emotion.

 

 

Nicholas Nixon. “The Brown Sisters”, 2007.

 

 

The interest in these issues is clear in many other works by this author. The exhibition gathers a sample very representative of this evolution, which initiated in the mid-70’s. Nixon captures with great talent the emotion on faces by using grand format cameras that forced him to stay very close to the people he portrayed. This relation of proximity, based on the confidence and the intimacy, appears in his pictures. The straightforward, sincere and naked looks that welcome the visitor are the result of an unhurried, meditated and careful work with which Nixon built up a whole discourse upon the passing of time.

 

 

Nicholas Nixon. “View of Turnpike Entrance, Boston”, 1976.

 

 

Nixon achieved a significant recognition at the beginning of his career with his works of urban photography. His participation in the exhibition “New Topographics”, with images of Boston and New York, placed him within the panorama of photographers of reference into the second half of the 20th century. The qualitative leap in his career took place from 1975 onwards when he moved with his family to Boston, a moment when he also started his teaching path at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, in the same city.

 

Nicholas Nixon. “F.K., Boston”, 1984.

 

 

The current exhibition offers a tour through his work from the first moments, going from the urban photography to the portraits, gender that has especially characterised this author. This is the perfect opportunity to go deeper into the personal universe of his models, captured without reservations or boundaries.

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.