Nicholas Crombach & Nurielle Stern
Whale Fall
2019

About the Item

In this fully collaborative work, artists Crombach and Stern explore subject matter derived from the problematic and mythologized human relationship to the natural world. When the body of a whale sinks to the abyssal plain and forms an ecosystem, this is called a whale fall. Whale Fall (2019) consists of glazed porcelain assemblages and furniture carved into skeletal forms. Clusters of partially recognizable porcelain objects allude to both the decaying flesh of a whale and Baroque still-life painting. Whale Fall oscillates between shipwreck and whale carcass. Illuminated from within, it is an otherworldly creature in its own right; a fleshy thing in a moment of arrested decay. Nurielle Stern (MFA, 2014) is a Toronto-based sculpture and installation artist. Her most recent large-scale installation, Fable, was commissioned by the Gardiner Museum. Stern is the 2019 recipient of the Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramic Art, and a 2020 recipient of the NCECA Emerging Artist Award. Her work is in the collections of the Gardiner Museum, Toronto, ON, the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Waterloo, ON, and the Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred, NY. Stern’s use of ceramic materials evokes an archeological imaginary. Combining ceramics with video projection and other media, her work navigates the malleability of language and materials, and the dialectics of inside and outside—the tamed and the wilderness. Nicholas Crombach (BFA, 2012) is an artist working in Kingston, ON. Crombach has been awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award. His recent solo exhibitions include Behind Elegantly Carved Wooden Doors (Art Mûr Montreal in 2017) and The End Of The Chase (New Art Projects, London, in 2018, Art Mûr Berlin in 2018, and Art Mûr Montréal in 2019). Crombach produces sculptural work with subject matter that interrupts a nostalgic reading of the historical European styles and motifs he references. Through the addition of unexpected materials, details and gestures, his work twists the frames of reference that we know and creates contemporary confrontations, while calling into question the inherent pitfalls and hierarchies of human-animal relationships. Crombach and Stern began working together in Toronto in the Fall of 2017. Their two-person exhibition, Petrichor, will take place at Cambridge Galleries, Queen’s Square Gallery in Spring 2021, and their collaborative exhibition, Whale Fall, will take place at Queen’s University’s Union Gallery in September 2021 (first shown at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery in 2019).

Creator:

Nicholas Crombach & Nurielle Stern

Creation Year:

2019

Dimensions:

Height: 60 in (152.4 cm)Width: 260 in (660.4 cm)Depth: 72 in (182.88 cm)

Medium:

Neon Light,Porcelain,Wood

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

2010-