Adjunct Assistant Professor and Master Printer at the Neiman Center for Print Studies Nathan Catlin ’12 is featured in a solo show, What Goes on Behind a Windowpane. This exhibition of new works is on view at Davidson Gallery in New York City until April 30, 2022.
The work included in What Goes on Behind a Windowpane spans media including painting, ceramic, stained glass, and found objects. According to the press release, “the title of the exhibition and many of the works in it are taken from the Charles Baudelaire poem ‘Windows’ but references the artist’s—and every person’s—experience over the past two years.”
An investigation of the forced lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, “windows appear in nearly every work, creating physical and visual thresholds through which people see and are seen, creating a voyeuristic effect as the subjects do not know they are being watched.” Particularly resonant is the use of stained glass in the exhibition. This material is most overtly associated with religious spaces and Catlin “subverts [this] to make profane the normally sacred narrative that they impart, while also sanctifying the interiority that we were all forced to experience.”
The artist’s use of ceramics also brings into dialogue the domestic. By using this form which is often associated with the home andis sometimes relegated to the domain of craft instead of fine art, Catlin insists upon the equal importance of all forms and brings domestic mediums into the gallery space.
Catlin received his BFA in printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007 and his MFA from Columbia University in 2012. He works in multiple mediums including printmaking, painting, ceramics, stained glass, and mosaic. This is his second solo exhibition with Davidson Gallery.
