Amy Nathan

Region: MFA Annual

Website: http://www.amynathan.com

City / State: Berkeley, CA

I apply pressure to images and language to crack them open, make them tactile, and dilate them into an expanded space. Images and words are my starting points for painted, faceted sculptures, in which I complicate and play with an internal/ external push-and-pull. My work speaks to many subjects— politics and power, the body’s visceral reaction to its environment, conversations between the haptic and the retinal—but there is a consistency in my examination of forces in opposition, and a need to open up and aerate an idea. My pieces incorporate visual puns: line becomes edge becomes surface, traversing a borderline of two and three dimensions as a way to think through perception. Often laid out as a stage set, or as individual figures at play, each piece orbits specific reference points. Putting them through the wringer, taking-apart-and-putting-back-together, has become my research and my practice. Through these processes, I discover how chosen images or words operate and communicate what is compressed within.