James Jamie Nares | Wave and Particle - Particle and Wave

JAMES NARES | WAVE & PARTICLE – PARTICLE & WAVE

James Nares and Durham Press are excited to announce the completion of four new screenprints, published in editions of fifty-five. Titled Wave & Particle and Particle & Wave, the two pairs of prints focus on the movement of a solitary brushstroke across the page. The series is printed with up to eleven impressions in eight colors on Saunders Waterford 425gsm paper, each measuring 48 x 24 inches.

These distinctively gestural strokes have been a hallmark of Nares' work since the 1980s when the artist began to design and produce brushes capable of precisely capturing her expressive, ephemeral movements. Indeed, throughout her practice, Nares has developed and adapted new implements to address ideas of motion, time, and velocity, often approaching questions of aesthetics and process with a technical, scientific disposition.

Nares' newest prints further these explorations, seizing upon the duplicative logic of printmaking to contemplate fundamental concepts of physics. The titles refer to a core idea of quantum mechanics stating that the miniscule building blocks of our universe can at once be a particle and a wave – a seemingly contradictory, paradoxical fact of existence. While Wave & Particle depicts two different brushstrokes in blue and orange-red floating on white backgrounds, Particle & Wave presents inversions of these compositions. Utilizing the same screens, the two Particle & Wave prints feature white brushstrokes against iridescent fields of blue and copper-red.

The works not only address dualities but also highlight how mutability and change are constant and essential. As such, the prints themselves are not quite fixed. The reflective inks used in Particle & Wave 1 and 2 respond to the ever changing light of their surroundings. Furthermore, the artist conceived all four works as individuals, while also working together as diptychs or a full set which can be displayed in two variable orientations.