Artist Name: Nate Hester
Residency Dates: June – July 2024
Born: 1976
Hometown: Durham, North Carolina
Lives & Works: Danville, Virginia
URL: https://thenatehesterstudio.com/ | Instagram: @nate_is_pretty_sketchy
Gallery: Craven Art Gallery | Brassworks Gallery | Turner Carroll Gallery
Education:
2014 | Master’s of Divinity, Duke University
2005 | MFA in Painting, Boston University
1999 | BA in Art & Art History, French Studies, Rice University
Bio/Statement:
Nate Hester, an emerging artist from North Carolina, exhibited widely two decades ago—resurfacing most recently at Satellite Art Show concurrent to Art Basel Miami in December 2023. Hester’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the Allen Memorial Art Gallery at Oberlin College, the Newark Public Library, and the New York Public Library.
Nate’s trans-disciplinary work (drawings, projected animations, textiles, ceramics, immersive installations of household ephemera, tags, and interactive encounters) explores the charming if disquieting incongruities of the places, communities and bodies to which we all yearn to belong. In the face of sadness and “saudade”—the Portuguese concept of nostalgia for the future—Nate calls forth the curiosity and playfulness of his own inner child, with the explicit hope that it invites audiences to connect to their own native and enduring bliss.
This summer, Nate mounts In Search of Lost Time, which showcases his newest monumental works on paper. Here, toys, flowers, imaginary avatars, human figures, found objects, and pop culture aphorisms cavort in almost—but never fully— comprehensible ways. The language of maximalist collage is invoked to address the fragmentation and inclusive reintegration of modern living. Hester asserts: “I don’t know about y’all, but my life is a hot-mess-dumpster-fire. Like that Leonard Cohen song about the cracks letting the light in, the beauty for me is how I manage to stitch all the ripped-to-shreds pieces back together again.” Here, in the face of the predatory aggression of the adult world, intimate sensuality and soulful tenderness prevail and proclaim that everything belongs to everything. His unapologetic pop-punk, Southern Gothic, magic realism tableaux are on display at Satellite Art Show LES at 279 Broome Street (Manhattan) throughout the month of June, and then at Residency Unlimited’s house on Governors Island beginning in mid-July.
Support: Nate Hester’s residency is made possible with support from Satellite Art Show.
