Literature

Over the past several decades, James Nares has often reimagined the acts of painting and drawing, using custom, handmade tools and heavy machinery to generate singularly expressive works of abstraction. High Speed Cone Graphs, a project that the artist began with Durham Press in 2018, continues to explore new modes of mark making.

Featuring dynamic curving lines, the High Speed Cone Graphs possess a sense of immediacy that belies the complex processes of their creation. In 2014 Nares began producing related works, “high speed drawings,” by tightly wrapping sheets of paper onto a motorized metal drum. As the cylinder turned on its axis, the artist used brushes of his own design to feed ink onto the page in dashes and solid lines of various weights. The resulting large-scale compositions, oriented either vertically or horizontally, evoke intense, unidirectional motion.

Nares similarly sought the aid of a motor for High Speed Cone Graphs, but instead of rotating a cylinder, he teamed with Durham Press to fabricate conical drums at angles up to ninety degrees. Meticulously crafted of wood, wire mesh, and plaster sanded to a smooth surface, the cones allow Nares to produce bending lines that are not only precise and concentric but also soft and gestural.

The portfolio High Speed Cone Graphs 1, 0º–90º, comprised of nine intaglio prints each measuring twenty inches squared, is the artist’s first project completed at Durham Press with this technique. Each features an isolated fragment of a curvilinear drawing, which Nares cropped irregularly to further accent the movement within individual images and the dynamic relationship across the nine frames. As photogravures printed in blue-black ink, these works emphasize the gradations and subtleties of these uniquely produced brushstrokes. Captivated by the energy and potential of this process, Nares and Durham Press are also continuing to create High Speed Cone Graphs in a variety of other formats and colors.

An edition of 15 sold as a set, High Speed Cone Graphs 1, 0º–90º is available directly through Durham Press. For more information on this portfolio, as well as earlier and upcoming editions by the artist, please contact sales@durhampress.com.