Sarah Martin-Nuss ‘Pouring Water Into Water’ at Rachel Uffner Gallery
The Anthropocene, and ecological decay are both focuses of Sarah Martin-Nuss, and in her most recent solo show at Rachel Uffner, Pouring Water Into Water, she paints textural, gestural, and abstract renditions of snapshots from the bodies of water that surrounded her growing up in Texas. In this body of work comprised of oil and pastel paintings and charcoal drawings, Martin-Nuss brings together her personal story with ecological engagements. These waters have changed due to exterior environmental impacts like weather but also industry, and the municipality’s approach to sustainability practices. At the same time, her relationship to these bodies of water has probably also shifted. Panta Rei. Like the ancient Greek philosopher Herakleitos wrote, everything flows.
An intertidal zone bordering the coastal region of South Texas, Southeast Texas, and the Texas Coastal Bend, the 13-county Gulf Coast region covers about 13,900 square miles from Huntsville on the north to Matagorda Bay and Galveston—stretches of sand beach line the coast. Part of this area is also the Gulf Coast Prairies and Marshes where the landscape shifts from barrier islands and salt grass marshes to bays and estuaries, tallgrass prairies, oak parklands, and oak mottes scattered. Its bottomlands are characterized more by tall woodlands. The area is diverse in plant life, has problems with invasive species and there is much pollution.
It is unbelievable that Martin-Nuss would remember the exactness of the water she saw growing up and traveling through the varied Texas Gulf Coast, the ingredients of her mark-making seem instead more based on her free associations with water and place. It’s reflective qualities (engagement with light and surrounding plant life), evaporation, and an attempt to capture the essence of a moment that will never return. Works splashed with nostalgia and romanticism. Yet, they hold a precision in capturing the behavior of water, especially the detailed charcoal works. Their pooling and running recalls photographic memory. Mirage on the Horizon, an oil pastel on canvas, captures a smoky landscape with rays of fiery reds and oranges int he sky bending and extending into the mist—as the earth is burning this work seems an astute albeit discrete allusion to the current ecological crisis. Pressure Rising simply depicts moving water and some plant life, the title however dials our emotional response up, what will change when the pressure has risen? Weather predictions are fickle, how will rain, wind, and temperature affect this and its landscape?
I first heard of Sarah Martin-Nuss, literally hearing her sound work, in conjunction with Katya Grokhovsky’s operatic performance Becoming American, as part of her large-scale Smack Mellon show Fantasyland, which explored the decaying notion of the American Dream and her personal story of migration. I remember liking it a lot, I recall its auditory ingredients, synthesized. Just like remembering the shape of water, I can imagine it but not quite grasp it. According the the press release her painting method follows “an iterative exercise of layering, flattening, erasing, and remaking,” to make her landscape come to life. Void of figures her work, by nature of it being woman-made, still alludes to the touch of a human hand. As a viewer I am captivated, in these works the waters are truly alive.
Pouring Water Into Water is on view at Rachel Uffner New York through Aug 16, 2024.
You Might Also Like
What's Your Reaction?
