For the 2016 edition of Fiac, 303 Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Nick Mauss.
Mauss, known for a practice incorporating drawing, painting, sculpture, moving image and sound, creates a mirrored environment through his own form of verre eglomisé, orchestrating the space as he would a drawing on paper. Works will be shown in various states of metamorphosis, as motifs are doubled-over and distended between mirrored glass paintings of varying size. Negative space is activated and expanded through the setting of the fair, as reflections of the individual works along with the surrounding architecture and glimpses of the viewers themselves become layered and embedded within the pictorial plane.
An artist with a keen eye for the sublimity of arcane art historical obscurities, Mauss studiously refers to themes and semi-forgotten narratives of artists outside the accepted canon. Artists such as Florine Stettheimer, Christian Berard, and Eyre de Lanux have become rebuses for his own work, operating in the interstices between figuration and abstraction, the explicit and the hidden. Mauss’ fluid methods of thematic incorporation are present even within his own body of work, as forgotten scraps, undersides and accidents become vehicles for new discoveries.
Nick Mauss has conceived the exhibition décor and will exhibit a sculptural work for the exhibition, “Designing Dreams, A Celebration of Leon Bakst”, running from October 23, 2016 to January 15, 2017 at the Villa Sauber, presented by the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco. Mauss has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions, including solo shows at Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; kim?, Riga; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims; Hiromi Yoshii, Tokyo; Galerie Neu, Berlin; and 303 Gallery, New York. His work is included amongst many prestigious public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Princeton Art Museum, Princeton; and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne. Mauss (born 1980, BFA, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art) lives and works in New York.
