Nathaniel Mary Quinn: This is Life : Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI

Nathaniel Mary Quinn: This is Life will be on view in MMoCA’s State Street Gallery from December 1, 2018 through March 3, 2019. The exhibition features seventeen of the artist’s mixed-media works on paper, created from 2014 to 2018. During this crucial four year period Quinn developed and refined the collage-like technique now synonymous with his name.

Quinn’s portraits initially appear to be pieced together from newspaper and magazine clippings. The artist, however, renders everything by hand. Using black charcoal and soft pastel over gouache—with careful interjections of oil paint, paint stick, and oil pastel—he masterfully manipulates his various mediums to create unconventional depictions of individuals from his past. Rather than replicating a physical likeness, Quinn’s abstracted compositions express psychological dimensions of identity.