Nicholas Crombach

Chew Toys 1

2018

In his recent works sculptor Nicholas Crombach uses the markers of tradition to critique social rituals. Through the employment of the mythology and the rich visual culture of the hunt, Crombach assembles works which revel in contradiction. He has created a series of unexpected juxtapositions that examine the cultural significance and the complex issues percolating around hunting and sporting traditions in the 21st century. For this exhibition, Crombach riffs off the myth of Diana and Actaeon, which provides a poignant framework for his theme. In the original story, Actaeon, the hunter and grandson of King Cadmus, is in the forest with his dogs, when he spies Artemis (Diana) in her bath attended by her nymphs. Diana was the goddess of the hunt, but when the mortal Actaeon sees her, her nymphs try to cover her modesty. She splashes him with water, turning him from a mortal man into a stag, who flees into the forest only to be hunted down and killed by his own dogs. The hunter becomes the hunted. Crombach’s Fetch (2018) refers to the mythology of Diana and Actaeon as he transforms the lofty and classical story of metamorphoses into a game of fetch in the local park, constructed on a grand scale. In Fetch (2018), Crombach creates a hybrid between the art historical imagery from paintings of hounds hunting stags with the flashy colours and synthetic materials of modern day dog chew toys. The sculpture is displayed alongside a variety of chew toys that act as an index for the sculptures interpretation, some transformed into porcelain that has been marked with the aristocratic hunting motifs found on antique English pottery. Here, the assembly of works create a conversation on the blurred boundaries between: histories of domestication, the working relationships we have with animals, contemporary issues of hunting as “play”, tradition and survival. A second major new sculpture “End of the Chase” is a collapsed version of a Victorian period rocking horse housed in London’s V&A Museum Of Childhood. The sculpture responds to the 2014 hunting act that passed in Britain which in turn attempts to obliterate the tradition of hunting with hounds, most commonly associated with the fox hunt...

Nicholas Crombach (BFA, 2012) is an artist working in Kingston Ontario. Crombach has been awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award. His solo exhibition, Behind Elegantly Carved Wooden Doors, was presented at Art Mûr...

Brandon Vickerd has in the past explored anthropomorphic hybridity and technological impetus through taxidermy and mechanics. For the Wrong Place, Wrong Time exhibition, the artist revisits these themes, this time putting bronze casting in the spotlight. Vickerd imagines anachronistic and incongruous juxtapositions of this material, which is reminiscent of both antique statuary and modern public monuments. These associations provoke laughter or discomfort, and they detonate in the space of the gallery as well as in the urban setting in which a large part of its production is destined. This is undoubtedly where the contextual and temporal inconsistencies evoked by the title of the exhibition reside. Inspired by the material tradition of bronze, the artist relies heavily on references to Greek mythology, which he likes to subvert. With Atlas (2019), Vickerd makes a reversal of the famous story of the bearer of the globe. Rather than bravely supporting the weight of the world, the Titan seems assailed by multiple spheres that hide the top of his body, leaving only his distinguished shoes and his dress pants. The sculpture Flora Hominis (2019) illustrates a transitional state between the human and the plant whose detail evokes the metamorphosis of the nymph Daphne into a tree, once immortalized by Bernini. The artist presents here a fragmentary study of this monument commissioned by the Royal Botanical Gardens of Burlington, Ontario. While the statue aims to honor the founder of the place, the latter is made paradoxically unrecognizable by the vegetation that proliferates on his face. In this way, Vickerd replaces the heroic celebration of his subjects with a partial occultation of their identity. The sculptor deftly adjusts to classic themes the signifiers of the disappointed promises of modernist ideology. On the 50th anniversary of the first US moon landing, Oblivion (Dead Astronaut...

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Nicholas Crombach has a BFA from OCAD University with a major in Sculpture and Installation. In 2016-17 he participated in a year-long studio residency at The Florence Trust in Londo...

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