Introduction

Esther Schipper is pleased to announce Nathan Carter’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery.

Nathan Carter presents twenty new drawings that explore a fictional surveillance and data collection scenario set in both natural and dystopian industrial environments. The twenty drawings are presented as single works, diptychs, and triptychs, and are inscribed with titles communicating the story behind each piece. In the drawings, one encounters a world filled with complex covert listening stations, interception antennas, and data-mining bunkers, all situated in remote alpine and coastal landscapes. The works depict cityscapes called Data Collection Cities crisscrossed by wires, cables, conduits, and funnels, that are all shrouded in arctic sea smoke. These secret surveillance sites appear to struggle with dangerous arctic weather conditions and from the threat of industrial saboteurs hiding in abandoned sodium-strychnine mining tunnels connected to Pirate Radio City, a nearby urban encampment of radical subversive activity.

The drawings begin as sublime natural landscapes and are then invaded by lines representing human intervention. The cities quickly become a disorganized, unregulated, and mutating urban organism. Drawings of towering antennae and hastily-built industrial expansion reflect the way these structures intrude and invade mountains, valleys, and coastlines—reminiscent of existing nuclear power plant incidents, resource extraction controversies, and the rabid growth of mobile communications infrastructure.

Sculptures, drawings, paintings, and collages by Nathan Carter fuse an abstract visual language with semi-fictional narratives that touch upon poignant contemporary topics. In his previous works, the artist has creatively addressed complex systems like urban traffic networks, non-verbal communication signals, use of radio transmission technologies, and historic incidents of nautical and aeronautical transportation. Dealing with representations of real and imagined geographic sites and communication networks, Carter’s works often take the form of abstracted maps and landscapes. The complex networks of drawn lines and brightly colored shapes represent intrusive human activity. Descriptive titles provide keys to the complex story lines and narrative interconnections underlying the works.

Nathan Carter’s drawings visualise activities that are meant to be secret and invisible. The question can be asked about the difference between the invented world of the drawings and evolvement of real world affairs.

The exhibition is supplemented by a publication that includes images of the drawings and a supporting text.