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Nicholas CrombachXenolith I2023
2023
About the Item
A collision. A landslide. A tectonic shift and a tumbling of boulders reveal geological strata that have been hidden for centuries. Nicholas Crombach’s Landslip is a slow unfurling of a glorious disaster, an asynchronous set of catastrophes that collide into a single moment. Both gorgeous and tragic, the exhibition revels in the tension between Crombach’s sumptuous, almost Baroque aesthetic and the feeling that we are witnessing carnage in the aftermath of an accident. Time slips and folds in on itself: a moment of temporal compression where dissociated tragi-comic disasters suddenly coincide, creating an ambiguous theatrical tableau that defies categorization. What are we looking at? An archaeological dig? A construction zone? A traffic accident? Landslip is a study in parallels between the tectonic shifts that expose previously hidden geological forms and human acts of archaeological excavation. In both cases, it is only through an act of destruction that something new is discovered.
Focusing on a world in which natural and human materials are irrevocably fused, Crombach considers the twinned studies of archaeology and geology through an Anthropogenic lens: slow excavations of long obscured stories, unearthed through human intervention or the slow erosion that occurs over millennia. Chariot Burial, based on an iron age practice in which the deceased were entombed with their horses, chariots, shields, and other accoutrements, is reimagined and re-presented as a car crash of colours, materials, and textures. Crombach employs multiple techniques to create handcrafted bones, chariot wheels, and a velvet flocked armature to conflate ancient burial practices, archeological methodologies, and systems of museological storage and display.
The embedding of one material into another is repeated in Crombach’s study of xenoliths, a geological phenomenon whereby rocks become encapsulated in magma as it cools. Crombach’s Xenolith series capitalizes on the visual correlation to inlay work in which shell or other decorative materials are carefully inserted into wood or stone and polished to a smooth cohesive surface. Quasi-recognizable objects are here captured in once molten aluminum and, like stones caught in cooling magma, some retain a familiar structure while others are rendered indistinguishable.
In geology, erratics are boulders that have been lifted, transported, and deposited elsewhere through the movement of glacial fields, resulting in anomalous objects that bear no geological relationship to the landscape in which they have come to rest. To create Erratic Boulders, Crombach utilizes the semiotic potential of his materials, combining automotive headlights with high-density foam used in museum display. The materials function as indices, pointing not only to the implication of tragedy but also to the mimetic quality of a theatre set or museum diorama.
Landslip is a meditation on tectonic shifts and displacement, metamorphosis and transmutation, reality and simulacrum, and the increasingly blurred boundaries between nature and culture that characterize the current geological era. What beauty will we unearth along the way as we hurtle towards the inevitable, ineffable catastrophe that is the future?
- Creator:Nicholas Crombach (1989, Canadian)
- Creation Year:2023
- Dimensions:Height: 21 in (53.34 cm)Width: 22 in (55.88 cm)Depth: 6.5 in (16.51 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Montreal, CA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU47612245472
Nicholas Crombach (BFA, 2012) currently works in Kingston, Ontario. He has been awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award and is the recipient of grants from the Toronto Arts Council, The Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts. In 2017 Crombach presented a solo exhibition, Behind Elegantly Carved Wooden Doors, at Art Mûr Montreal receiving reviews in Border Crossings Magazine (summer 2018) and Vie des Arts (Winter 2017-18). His solo exhibition, The End of the Chase, travelled in 2018-2019, exhibiting at New Art Projects in London UK, Art Mûr Berlin and Art Mûr Montréal. In 2019 Crombach produced an exhibition of collaborative works with artist Nurielle Stern entitled Whale Fall, presented at The Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery in Waterloo. He has been awarded several major commissions for public sculpture, including Billy, Nanny, and the Kids, in Burlington, ON, and Horse and Cart located in Victoria Park, Kingston, ON. He is currently working on Flock, for Niagara Falls Exchange in Niagara Falls, ON and Wind Vane for Florence Carlyle Park in Woodstock, ON. In 2016-2017 Crombach participated in a year-long residency at The Florence Trust (London, UK), and most recently was artist-in-residence at The Studios at MASS MoCA (July 2022) in North Adams, Massachusetts.
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