AS THE SUN WOUNDS THE SHADOWS
UCSD MAIN GALLERY, APRIL 2024
In AS THE SUN WOUNDS THE SHADOWS, Nathan Storey presents various bodies of work, such as Traces and Stains, that propose printed matter as a facilitator, witness, and residue of gay desire. Storey's artistic practice explores the intricate relationship between printed materials and queer memory, collectivity, liberation, and loss. Words and images are printed, photographed, re-printed, re-photographed, collaged, and so on, recontextualizing gay and queer materials from collective and personal archives, blurring but not erasing the seams.
Storey’s prints not only underscore the ephemeral nature of queer printed matter but also showcase the trace, the stain, and the inherent humanity within an archive of accumulation. Through repetition, recontextualization, and transformation, the prints crystallize for the viewer. Rural queerness and eroticism saturate the words, images, and collaged surfaces, forming a matrix - an analytical framework - that invites viewers to engage with the residues of queer culture presented in the exhibition.
In parallel and intersecting bodies of work, Storey delves into the political and personal potentialities of printed matter amid a moment of mass digital migration. The touch, the trace, and the stain are integral to the legacy of queer printed matter, influencing its political and erotic efficacy, as well as the formation of social identities. Queer printed matter plays a crucial role in organizing queerness into salient subject positions, articulating desire, commonalities, and distance, all crucial to the performance of genders and sexualities.
Storey’s rhizomatic practice vividly illustrates a longing for interconnectedness—connections with individuals, communities, histories, and future potentialities. Simultaneously looking backward and forward, it encapsulates the past, present, and future in an enmeshed archive.
-Dillon Chapman
