For his recent series of paintings, LA-based artist Nathan Hylden established a system of distinct parts: a printed area with an image, a gestural silver wash, and a sprayed area. The images in the work (a stool, a fan, etc.) come from his studio, and in a sense, the subject of the painting is the act of making a painting. Hylden explains:
Each painting in a way has this subtext of being a tool for making another painting. It’s indexed within the other paintings in negative space. In every painting, I change the order of the three steps – the image, the gestural painting and the spray. So in one case, the image will be really clear or in another the paint will seem like it’s separating the other two layers.
The Whitney Museum and the Stedelijk Museum recently purchased works from this series. Hylden has been in group exhibitions at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; and Kunsthalle CCA Andratx, Mallorca. His first institutional solo exhibition opened last summer at the Kunstverein, Hamburg.