MARC NAGTZAAM
The Erased Tapes
25 August – 01 October, 2011
“Description”
“Nagtzaam makes drawings. Using graphite and the occasional colored pencil, he works primarily in black and white and in varying formats of paper, from small to middling, which are never smaller than a magazine page and rarely, if ever exceed the format of the human body (except for in the rare cases of wall drawings). The visual repertoire of the drawings ranges from a kind of hard-edge all-over abstraction to the reproduction of the written word. Seemingly idiosyncratic grids of differing modes and sizes abound, while exploded lattices of linear markings stream across surfaces of paper with an apparent randomness, and circular, all-over doodles are apotheosized into meticulous labors of graphic splendor. The language pieces generally consist of two types: one of which features the title of the work or a group of potential titles collaged together at random and drawn out on paper, and the other which features language culled from art magazines, copied and written on the paper in seemingly coherent columns. The art magazine language drawings are marked with all the imperfect and uneven personality of gesture which one normally expects from pencil on paper, and which is almost entirely absent from the much more controlled geometric drawings that comprised the rest of the artist’s practice. This makes for a paradox, and consequently, the kind of tension that essentially animates Nagtzaam’s output. Proceeding as such, he manages to render the highly impersonal language of art journalism manifestly personal– a language moreover that could hardly be more codified; as codified, in fact, and therefore as ineluctably borrowed as abstraction– while he to all intents and purposes, submits a rather personal process of abstraction to the alienating anonymity of the grid.
A word, however, about certain of his grids, and how they are made, seems to be necessary here in order to understand the so-called personal process to which I allude. Nagtzaam’s grids of the asymmetrical, frame-by-frame variety– think an impossibly over-loaded or disorganized comic book page– are actually based on collages of images collected by the artist from magazines. Exactly what kind of images they are is, as Nagtzaam insists, devoid of significance; their significance lies elsewhere, in the mere fact that for whatever unknowable reason, they caught and retained his attention long enough to be provisionally, or rather marginally preserved. Once selected, they are arranged in an irregular puzzle-like grid, photocopied, and then traced over, such that only the abutting, rectilinear contours of the images remain, effectively effacing the content of the erstwhile images (to describe the process as „bracketing content“ could not be meant more literally). Whereupon the resultant grids would seem to submit to the specious, all-encompassing anonymity of the grid. But even a cursory inspection of the Nagtzaam’s essentially wonky grids will reveal a pattern heterogenous enough to suggest some obscure organizing principle, some ineffably personal touch, thus saving the grids, at the eleventh hour, so to speak, from being absorbed into the aforementioned anonymity of the originary Grid. As much they as they initially court it, they ultimately resist it.”
Marc Nagtzaam was born in 1968 in Helmond, NL. His work has been exhibited among others at Frac Bourgogne, Dijon (FR), MACBA, Barcelona (ES), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL), and S.M.A.K., Gent (B). Upcoming shows include “One Show About One Drawing” with Hans Demeulenaere at Museum M, Leuven (B) and “Het Zelfportret, Het Huis en De Seizoenen”, a group show curated by Phillip van den Bossche & Koenraad Dedobbeleer at Mu.Zee, Oostende (B). In October 2011, his latest book “Reissue” will be published at Roma Publications. He has previously published eight books with Roma Publications, including the very first Roma Publication, No.1, (SOME), in 1989.
