Unmaking - Gordon Nicholson

Event Details

Corrigan Gallery LLC is excited to announce Gordon Nicholson’s solo show, “Unmaking.” It will be on display April 4-30 with an opening reception on Friday, April 6, which is open to the public and will run from 5-8pm. Corrigan Gallery is located at 62 Queen Street in downtown Charleston.

Nicholson’s lovely, haunting watercolors and ink on paper include a stream of consciousness journal across, sometimes around the buildings, he is reconstructs in two dimensions. One is reminded of old travel letters where notes and commentary have been interrupted by a visual notation drawn the correspondent. This handwritten diary may or may not be legible or intelligible, but it draws the viewer to a closer inspection and provides a sense of intimacy that a standard watercolor usually does not evoke. He is often pulled to decrepit buildings showing the richness of neglect but he also paints other architectural scenes in a manner of elevating them to a singular attention. It need not be a building for the artist to see the structural integrity (or disintegration) deserving preservation on paper. Or perhaps the artist is pointing out how words have overrun the solidity of structures.

The artist’s works have appeared in Batture, the LSU School of Architecture Journal in an article in 2004 entitled Present Imperfect that described his thoughts relative to his paintings and the south. “All of the work represents sites in a state of transformation… the images can be divided up into three subjects of study---the ruin, the machine, and light. Exploring ruins induces self-conscious reflections of our body and its temporality. The paintings of broken mechanical machines represent a curious tension between subject matter and aspects of the artistic process. The departure of each work is a digital image captured effortlessly by an electronic device. Then the instantaneous ease of the initial step is reinvested with physicality by the labors of the hand – drawing, painting, and writing. In some ways that initial tension may be symptomatic of our present condition of increasingly mediated experience through electronic devices.”

Gordon Nicholson is an architect with awards for design including two AIA SC Robert Mills Residential Design Merit Awards, a Grace Memorial Bridge Design Competition Co-Winner and a Grand Award 2006 recipient from Remodeling Magazine. His work appeared in Canada in the fall of 2007 in an event called “Reconciling Poetics and Ethics in Architecture,” at McGill University, Canada with his paper is titled “Silent Space” and the group show of "70 Architects." His work is included in the MUSC Contemporary Art Collection. March 2009 the show entitled “TRACES 12358,” works by Gordon Nicholson, was held at the Florida International University College of Architecture & Arts Paul L Cejas Gallery. His work also graces the walls of Fish Restaurant in downtown Charleston. This upcoming show is his first solo show at Corrigan Gallery where he has been showing since 2007.

In its seventh year, Corrigan Gallery is the culmination of 23 years of experience in the Charleston art market. Representing more than a dozen artists in an intimate space, the gallery presents a new show almost every month and invites visiting artists at least once a year. Other gallery artists include Manning Williams, Duke Hagerty, Lynne Riding, Sue Simons Wallace, Gordon Nicholson, John Moore, William Meisburger, Mary Walker, Lese Corrigan, Paul Mardikian, Kevin Bruce Parent and John Hull. Many of these local artists have established national careers and are included in museum collections.

A gallery of contemporary works exploring the depth and intellect behind the drive to create, Corrigan Gallery provides a depth to the historic city’s traditional bent.

Open six days a week and other times by appointment, the gallery can be viewed 24 hours a day.