MODULATIONS
Nathan Paul Rice + Ellen Robinette
March 16—May 4, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 16th, 4-7pm
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 12-4pm
or by appointment, contact hello@satorprojects.com
1607 SE 3rd, 97214
Modulations is an exhibition of new and collaborative works by artists Nathan Paul Rice and Ellen Robinette. Both Rice and Robinette capture and remind us of the fun and magic that can happen in the practice of mark making and not being too precious about how the hand's expression takes shape. Yet, in a time when it seems most world building is created and experienced for the screen, these pages with their bodily textures feel just that, precious.
New works by Nathan Paul Rice explore the tension between play and peril. In play we navigate structures, explore risk, find and make our own connections, and through this process also discover the perils of the physical world. In Rice's world, forms obscured by black clouds reveal just hints of abstracted bodies living in a physical plane filled with vibrating patterns and color pops. He enlists color and pattern in both his paintings and sculptures to consider the effect of tension between the public and private spheres on our bodies and minds.
Robinette's universe is full of space and breath. The eye roams along ombre lines and rests in flowered fields of pattern, enters and explores shadowed landscapes and arcades. This current series of works, which the artist loosely calls Merge Visible, examines collaging past work with current in an attempt to mirror how memory is experienced–it's layers, cyclical patterns and defiance of time. Past photos of Ellen's own memories traveling and exploring abandoned spaces are softened and hazy through the photocopy transfer process, both content and technique employing nostalgia. She uses a language of pictorial abstractions for non-verbal storytelling, and is interested in how when a sequence or series of imagery is put together it begins to form a narrative.
Rice and Robinette's world collide in a collaborative mural, as well as a series of sculptures where Ellen's pictorial language combines with Nathan's wooden forms.
This exhibition is generously supported by Killian Pacific
Photography by Portland Art Documentation
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Nathan Paul Rice was born and raised in San Francisco and graduated from Lewis and Clark College in 2003 with a BA in fine art and sociology. In 2018 he received his MFA in Applied Craft + Design, a collaborative program between Pacific Northwest College of Art and Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, Oregon. He is the founder of Good Job Inc., an experimental art and design practice.
Ellen Robinette is a visual artist and designer with an affinity for patterns, material textures, and color combinations. Robinette is a University of Oregon graduate with BA majors in fine art and product design, and a minor in anthropology. She is currently exploring themes around the constructs of time, the time-based quality of mediums, and accumulating a language of pictorial abstractions for non-verbal storytelling.