Nick Carter

My paintings explore ideas about color, value, and fabric. The perception of color is a personal, subjective experience, but our interpretation of it is influenced by societal codification and veiled in specious science. The idea of value — the spectrum of light to dark and trash to treasure — is similarly tangled in a network of optical, linguistic, symbolic, and political connotations. I use fabric because of its inherent, intuitive connection to our bodies and the built environment. Images of waves and barriers recur in my work because of their relationship to fabric, with its combination of structure and freedom, grid and flow.

My studio practice involves applying and discharging color from fibers — usually second-hand garments and factory defect yardage, as well as my own handmade weavings — to create objects that confuse support and surface, self-expression and domination, pigment and value. I often install my paintings off-the-wall, with a focus on how they will relate to the movements of air, light, and people around them. My work is not completed in the studio; it seeks context and human interaction.