On March 13th 2020 the world as we knew it changed – businesses closed, doors were locked and sheltering in place became the new normal as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. On that same day, Nathaniel Price had a new exhibition opening at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston, MA. The installation was impeccable, the show was documented beautifully–but no one would ever experience it in person. The work stayed up in the gallery with the hope to be able to re-open to the public at some juncture. Then, on April 14, 2020, a major water main broke nearby under Harrison Avenue. The street buckled, cars were swallowed, and water flowed throughout the South End neighborhood. It was as though the floodwaters were a physical manifestation of the fear that had begun to swallow the world.
18 months later, Abigail Ogilvy Gallery proudly presents After the Flood, a solo exhibition of new artworks by Nathaniel Price. The title is both a metaphor for life after the height of the pandemic, and also one that resonates with many of the longstanding themes in Price’s work. The artist employs the human form and common materials, such as plaster, concrete, steel wire, wood, paper, pencil and words, to examine our responses to the many storms of our contemporary condition. Stresses, strains, resistance, melancholy, fortitude, echoes of the pandemic, climate catastrophe, and ordinary challenges of a middle-aged life are woven into the artworks on view.
The works are informed by a pursuit of meaning through intellectual and emotional observations that balance themes in psychology, medicine and family dynamics and have been developed over three decades of work that acknowledge the storm that has come while facing the future with a quiet strength and a grey glow. Nathaniel Price’s statement is oblique but poetically revealing: A psychologist once said to a troubled child, “Which would you rather do: come to the office, sit down, and talk about yourself and your difficulties, or, come to the office and build things out of matches and Popsicle sticks and set them on fire?
The exhibition is through November 28th, 2021.
For more information on the gallery please visit –Abigail Ogilvy Gallery
