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Leeds Beckett artist's exhibition lights up New York
The New Museum, in Lower Manhattan, exhibited artwork by Nathaniel Mellors, Senior Lecturer in the School of Art, Architecture and Design.
The display, ‘Progressive Rocks’, included four films, paintings and sculptures, all of which feature recurring characters and story lines that intertwine.
Nathaniel – a Los Angeles and Amsterdam-based artist – writes a script for each project and looked at puns, abstract meaning and the collapse of narrative structures in his exhibition.
Nathaniel, who lectures in Fine Art, said: “Having my work displayed at the New Museum has been a great opportunity.
“The exhibition brought together works made over the last eight years, while I have been working at Leeds Beckett - but it's a new installation and also features new paintings and a new version of The Aalto Natives, the video installation I made for the Finnish Pavilion at last year's Venice Biennale.
“Progressive Rocks is about making and owning things now but uses a series of pre-historic absurdist fantasies to address its themes. There's a recurring Neanderthal figure who is smarter than modernity."
The display was Nathaniel’s first solo exhibition in New York. He has also had exhibitions at the ICA, London, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and the Venice Biennale.