Nathaniel Rackowe
The movement of neon in Nathaniel Rackowe's sculptures NLP3 and NLP4 reflect the city's shifting light. Transformation progresses with a gradual change in atmosphere, temperature and mood, as lights change from hot red to cool white. It's an urban light, neon, which hypnotically captures our attention, impossible to resist. Rackowe's geometric forms are almost like traffic signs warning of hazards ahead.
His materials and palette speak of buildings, street signs, construction sites: it's an urban language. Like the memoir of an artist's fascination with the city, his work comes from the streets of London, and cities visited during artist's residencies, most recently in Copenhagen, during winter where the sun barely rises during long hours of twilight. Rackowe finds unexpected moments of urban beauty, lamplight shining on concrete steps, the symmetry of stairwell windows lined up the side of an apartment block, or blank light boxes used for advertising lit up at an empty bus stop.
He introduces glass into this work, which modifies the urban landscape into something slicker, more complete. His sculpture GP06 stands on the floor, smoked glass rises up out of foundations made from breeze blocks. The glass, framed by strip lights, glows like windows at dusk. Concrete brings the sculpture back to elemental things, to the construction site, raw materials, which have not been forgotten in favour of the sensual qualities of light.
Rackowe's sculpture looks back to American minimalism, to Dan Flavin and Donald Judd. He engages with their rigorous aesthetic, and dramatic use of light: they were an early influence. But we live in confessional times, and there's a personal dimension to his sculpture that his predecessors didn't go in for. His is a reflection on contemporary life in the city, of wandering along empty streets at dawn, past construction sites where wires hang from scaffolding around skeletal buildings.
His glass pieces, titled from GP01 up to GP06, bring a sense of intimacy, of private spaces to his work. Sheets of glass, strip lights and wooden frames echo bathroom mirrors, our domestic life indoors rather than out on the streets. Their sleek geometric rigour is at the edge of designer cool but exposed wires and grey paint on oak roughen up the finish. They exist in between private and public, slick and raw, like the twilight place of his neon work. A hand painted vertical line wavers down the side of glass, making it function as a surface, rather than simply a transparent sheet of reflecting light. Wires snake down from a single light source, and echo the wavering lines of paint. Exposed rather than hidden, in bright colours like a high voltage warning, they remind us to be careful. These are not objects to get too comfortable with, or too close to, they might be hazardous. The geometry of each piece causes our eyes to flit between horizontal and vertical lines, of timber, glass, light and paint. Yellow, blue and red divide space with the strong urban colours of street signs, roadworks and building sites.
Beauty can be a tricky word particularly in contemporary art, too subjective, decorative, sensual, perhaps not clever enough. But Rackowe engages with it, he wants his work to be considered beautiful. As ever, it's not that simple, his sculpture made of raw materials found in hardware shops and builders' merchants, basic stuff, stands on the verge of a slick kind of beauty, and yet not quite.
Text by Hannah Duguid
Born in 1975, UK. Lives and works in London, UK
Education
| 2001 | MFA Sculpture, The Slade School Of Fine Art, UCL,London |
| 1998 | B.A. Honours Fine Art (Sculpture), Sheffield Hallam University |
| 1995 | B.T.E.C Diploma, Foundation Studies, Cambridge Regional College |
Current Exhibitions
|
2013
|
Dynamo: A century of light and movement in art, 1913-2013, Grand Palais, Paris |
Forthcoming Exhibitions
|
2013
|
DEN FRIE Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Public Art Project Lumiere, Light Festival of Durham, UK The Double Illums Bolighus, Copenhagen |
Solo Exhibitions
|
2013
2012
2011 |
Reflections on Space, BISCHOFF/WEISS, London Spin, Edun Fall/Winter Collection Fashion Show, New York Solo show, Art Cologne, Cologne On the Floor: John Gibbons and Nathaniel Rackowe, Gooden Gallery, London Black Beacon, Calvin Klein Project, New York |
| 2010 | Legacy I - An outdoor sculpture exhibition, LIU gallery, London |
| What the city left behind, BISCHOFF/WEISS, London |
| Solo Show at the Delfina Foundation, London |
| 2009 |
Solo Show, Art Basel Miami Beach, Positions with BISCHOFF/WEISS, Miami Group Show, Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea |
| 2008 | Divisions, Centro Colombo Americano, Bogota, Colombia Pathfinding, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris Preverberation, Siobhan Davies Studios, London |
| 2007 | Luminous Territories, BISCHOFF/WEISS, London First Floor, Galerie Almine Rech, Project Space, Paris |
| 2005 |
Shift, BISCHOFF/WEISS, London Stanhope Solo Exhibition, Serpentine Pavillon, London Timebase Gallery, Hull, UK |
| 2004 | GardenFresh Gallery, Chicago |
Group Exhibitions
| 2011 |
The Shape of Things, Ferrate Gallery, Tel Aviv Come le lucciole, Nicoletta Rusconi, Milan |
| What The Thunder Said, Lu Magnus, New York |
| 2009 | Kaleidoscopic Revolver, British Art, Hanjiyun Contemporary Space, Beijing, China Natural Wonders: New Art from London, Group Show, Baibakov Art Projects, Moscow Superposition, Two Person Show, Duve Gallery, Berlin |
| 2008 |
Zoo Art Fair, BISCHOFF/WEISS, London Nathaniel Rackowe and Douglas White, Art Vandelay Gallery, London Constructs for Illumination, Allsopp Contemporary London Domestic Appliance, Flowers East, London |
| 2007 |
Group Show, Du machinique et du vivant, La Reserve, Pacy-sur-Eure, France The Body Electric, Truman Brewery, London All Tomorrows Pictures, ICA, London Jerwood Sculpture Prize: Short Listed Artist Exhibition, Jerwood Space, London Time, Burghley Sculpture Garden Burghley House, Stamford |
| 2006 |
Artificial Light, MoCA Miami, USA Artificial Light, Anderson Gallery, Richmond, USA Residency followed by Monologue/Dialogue Part I, Bangkok, Thailand Reveal, Installation for the Sculpture Trail Forest of Dean, UK |
| 2005 | Sine Qua Non, BISCHOFF/WEISS, London |
| 2004 | 2X2, Dahl Gallery, Luzern, Switzerland Trackers, PM Gallery, UK |
| 2003 |
I am a Curator, Chisenhale Gallery, London Origin, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester R type and Pests, BLOC, Sheffield, UK |
| 2002 |
Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Static Gallery Liverpool in September during Biennial and Barbican Center in December, UK Fame and Promise, Victoria Miro Gallery, London It Was Bigger Than All of Us, The Prenelle Gallery, South Quay, Londo |
| 2001 |
Communicating At an Unknown Rate, Engine Group Show Harrow Road, London Postgraduate Degree Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London |
| 2000 | Slade Engine. Group show, Vauxhall London |
Public Sculpture
| 2010 | Spin, Lima, Peru |
| 2008 | Government Art Collection commission for 50 Queens Anne's Gate, London |
| 2007 | RP3, Economist Plaza with CAS, London |
| 2006 | LP4, Victoria, London, UK |
Grants / Awards
| 2004 | Stanhope Fellowship |
| 2003 | Boise Travel Scholarship2001: Arts and Humanities Research Board award for Postgraduate Study |
| 2001 | Arts and Humanities Research Board award for Postgraduate Study, 1999-2001 |
Residencies
|
2009 2006 |
Artist residency with the Delfina Foundation in Beirut, Lebanon British Council Residency in Bangkok |
Selected Collections
CIFO (Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation), Miami
Jumex Collection, Mexico
Museum of Modern Art, Lima, Peru
LVMH Collection, Paris
Museum of New Art, Tasmania, Australia
David Roberts Collection, London
UK Government Art Collection
Hauer & Wirth Collection
Ernst & Young Collection, London
Patricia Marshall, Private collection, Paris
Marc Blondeau, Private collection, Geneva
Almine-Rech-Picasso, Private collection, Paris
