Nicholas Nyland’s work regularly references art historical or traditional craft sources to produce images or objects that tend to defy easy categorization and play with assumptions about the fine art object. Executed in a range of media (including painted canvas, leather, and ceramic), the work plays loosely with the precedents of Early American decorative art and the early Modernist and Minimalist cannon.

The complex identity of the work in the exhibition is an opportunity to engage in physical speculations and painted propositions. The work is often about those very basic qualities and effects (color, form, gesture, materials, and style) that are often seen as a means to an end (representing an image) but whose operation in the apprehension of the object/image is often contradictory.

Nicholas Nyland (b. 1976) works in Tacoma, WA. He received an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadephia. Recent projects include the 2011 On Site summer project at the Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle and solo exhibitions at Prole Drift, Seattle and Backspace gallery in Peoria, IL. His artwork has been included in exhibitions throughout the region including the Tacoma Art Museum, Bellevue Art Museum, and the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle. Nyland received an Artist Trust Fellowship in 2008.