Et al. presents
Alexander Nowik
May 25 - June 23, 2018
Reception: Friday, May 25, 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
620 Kearny, San Francisco, CA
Alexander sits and records. And he doesn’t have to be told to do so—it’s almost the opposite, like, one would have to tell him to stop, to implore, to beg. But to do so would be to deny him something as essential as breathing. “The artist needs but a roof, a crust of bread, and his easel…” begins a somewhat dramatic quote about painting that though hackneyed seems apt here.
Seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years are all spoken for, each in service of a practice and its upkeep (as Alexander has in recent years become focused on cataloguing and storing his prodigious output).
Whether with a small well-worn pad of paper or an easel and paint—often dragged about in a too apt stroller—he scours his world for places where stillness prevails. So, of course, there are still lives set up in his studio, and plein air scenes in which nature and architecture dutifully pose. As for people, there’s time with a posed model but also work made without his subject knowing—on a train maybe or often in coffee shops. There, huddled over a laptop, smartphone, or book, they perform for him. What book is holding them rapt or the exact nature of their computing remains a mystery but their stillness and focus take their guard down—postured as if alone, somehow invisible in public.