Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicole Mauser.
Nicole, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
Originally I’m from Indianapolis, Indiana. Art has always been a part of life. Both my grandmothers were painters but very different in their own right. My father is a draughtsman, a doodler and an engineer, my mother is a graphic designer and printmaker. An array of art materials were always present and accessible. Even when I was young, I preferred to draw instead of watch TV. Art making and museum visits were constants. At the same time growing up I also played all the sports. I was lucky to have parents that took me to art classes after school. In high school, I particularly remember weekend classes at Herron School of Art for life drawing and painting taught by grad students. In high school, our oil painting classes took place on the basement floor with little ventilation and to this day I still love the smell of turpentine and linseed oil.
In college, I made the decision to pursue studying art full time. I transferred from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana to Ringling College of Art & Design in Sarasota, Florida. At RCAD I took web design classes and learned Photoshop parallel to traditional painting, printmaking and life drawing. This collision of digital or virtual and art historical is still present in my work today. In a small school, our professors were engaged, present, and became mentors. Also, I had the opportunity to study abroad in France where I was immersed in international contemporary and conceptual art as well as spending time with historical masterworks. The Pompidou’s exhibition “Sons & Lumieres” made an impact that still informs my work at the intersection of video and painting.
After college I moved to Kansas City, Missouri and became active in the art scene there. Along with 4 artists I co-founded an artist-run gallery called Plug Projects that is still active today. I also co-founded the Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KCPAC) with several artists and friends where studio-based painters went on weekly excursions and camping trips to make work loosely from observation. Both projects were immense amounts of fun and work. Initially I moved to Chicago for my MFA at The University of Chicago. After moving back to KCMO a second time in 2011, my husband, Matt Brown, and I moved back to Chicago in 2013 and have stayed. I’ve taught painting at UIC, Marwen, and held many other jobs in between. For several years now, I’ve been a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Art (DoVA) at The University of Chicago and share semi-private basement studios with artists Matthew Metzger, Miao Wang and Ryan Peter Miller in the Ravenswood neighborhood.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I make paintings, collage, and video installations. This work investigates tensions at play between the physical materiality of paint and the legibility of gestures within a language of abstraction. Chroma plays a crucial role in layers and gradients to destabilize space. I connect the effect of light to Photoshop to physical gestures driven by perceptual and physical color. Through the mechanics of collage, then, I specifically abstract pictorial space in a process that is ultimately rooted in the ambiguity of images coming into being rather than having arrived.
As I intervene on the connections between painting and digital processes, I layer the transmission of light to create stutters within the image. In newer video work I investigate the rhetoric of light, drawing on hologram color palettes, in particular, to investigate spaces where reflection and transparency happen at once. I employ a deliberate slowness of time-based media and static images fused with the instantaneousness of a mark in video work. Doing so forges tension in/and duality to assert materiality while delaying legibility in ways that heighten the visceral impact. The way I approach image making does not beg the question why forms begin and exist, but how they will play out.
Currently, I’m working on a series of paintings based on holograms that are function as either “Portals” or “Color Memory.” I translate color embedded in a reflective surface and light (additive) into the static hues of pigment (subtractive). Texture, surface and depth of these paintings convey residues of the hand yet evoke the uncanny feeling of digital screens and physicality of collage. I’m interested in the compressed 2D/3D space and durability of holograms across a broad cultural spectrum: collectable kitsch/ephemera, fibers woven into currency, ID cards, credit cards, military technology and even string theory. The hologram represents “authenticity” and a nostalgia for futurism.
Recently, I made several 5 ft. x 6 ft. paintings which are essentially the span of my body. My intention is to heighten the viewer’s physical awareness and sensation of looking. In response to the onslaught of information we swim through daily, I make images that are an invitation to slow down, ask questions and suspend time for the viewer to occupy. I look forward to making more installations like the one I made at the Chicago Artists Coalition this past spring by painting large-scale gradients onto architecture. Also, continue making ‘zines that collect research and thoughts in the studio alongside painting. I enjoy talking to and about other artists’ work so I contribute writing to Chicago Artist Writers (CAW) and Newcity. Tobey Albright and I engage in an ongoing collaboration where we present and reconfigure our art collections making the gallery space into a performative publication entitled, Privates (www.privates.work/process). Above all, when people see my work I want them to take a painting home with them.
What responsibility, if any, do you think artists have to use their art to help alleviate problems faced by others? Has your art been affected by issues you’ve concerned about?
It’s even more important to be an active part of and connect to local community and issues. Artmaking is a critical part of developing a worldview. Daily international or local issues are a natural part of conversations for students in the classroom. For young artists/students, I try to frame critical conversations as a part of creative practice in relationship to current events and art history. Even art’s inherent escapism is valuable to gain perspective and take action. Through teaching and conversations, I nurture individual voices and visual practice for each artist. Many artists I know would actually be amazing forces in politics. However, the inherent demands of an ambitious art practice and balancing other life priorities is the eternal challenge. The precarity of multiple part-time jobs, not having access to affordable healthcare, childcare and other support networks that many countries have makes it all the more challenging to survive and have an ambitious art practice without being wealthy in the US. I think this limits the impact which artists and entrepreneurs can make, particularly young ones. I have seen several talented friends move to countries with better living standards in order to continue their art careers.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I have paintings available in the flat files at Goldfinch Gallery (goldfinchgallery.org). I’m working towards a two-person exhibition that opens in December at Filter Space in Chicago with the talented photographer Colleen Keihm (filterphoto.org/filter-space/). This fall I’ve been invited by artist Tim Nickodemus’ to present work at his studio/project space inside Mana Contemporary. Over the past year I’ve been lucky to have paintings in an international curatorial project called, “Echoes” organized by Jonah Criswell and Mirjam Wendt. This group exhibition features artists from Berlin and the US. Thus far it traveled to Berlin (Germany), Sydney (Australia), Kansas City (MO, USA), and it will continue to travel to other venues. For more info visit: echoes.international. I always welcome visitors and conversations in my studio, so don’t hesitate to contact me. Visit my website for available artworks and exhibition details as they develop.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.nicolemauser.com, www.privates.work
- Phone: 1 (872) 228-5959
- Email: nicolemauser@gmail.com
- Instagram: @nicolemauser
- Facebook: Nicole Mauser
- Twitter: @Nicolemauser
- Other: https://chicagoartistwriters.com/contributor/nicole-mauser/
Image Credit:
Photo credit: Robert Chase Heishman (2018), Colleen Keihm (2017) and Sabrina Chan (2018).
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