Nari Ward, Sun Splashed Di Giugno, 2013.



C-print, 74,5 x 100 cm. Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin


Nari Ward, Sun Splashed Artin, 2013



C-print, 125 x 167 cm. Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin


Nari Ward, Sun Splashed Listri libreria, 2013.



C-print, 125 x 167 cm. Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin


 
BEYOND, 2013
 
The main element of this work is a hot air balloon sculpture constructed from scrap metal. The work will be around eight or nine meters in height and three meter in width. The bottom section or basket area of the balloon, which is positioned on the floor, will be weighed down with burlap bags filled with sand. From the top area of the metal balloon structure will be tied numerous ropes (these will hang loosely and activate the space above the sculpture) each of which will be connected to clear or colored glass bottles hanging from the metal supports of the gallery stalls area. Inside each bottle will be an index card with the word “beyond” written in a particular language.  There will be over one hundred bottles tied with ropes, which should represent some of the languages of the world.
This use of the glass bottle serving to facilitate a poetic gesture of the ‘message in a bottle’.
  
"Looking Beyond" by Anne Daveri
 
Anne Daveri: You are presently developing a series of self-portraits entitled Sun Splashed, in which you are dressed as your uncle, a musician who was part of Happy Smilers, a Jamaican band whose name you also used for a work in 1996. In this series you appear in different domestic landscapes, holding some of their owners’ houseplants, watered like the plants in your “tropical” clothes. You are playing quite openly on cultural stereotypes of representation of your native country, putting them into relation with a different socio-economic context embodied by Italian private homes. Taking care of the botanical being contrasts with the forced position of the human figure,
sweating, in pictures that remind us of vintage anthropological portraits. I am very intrigued by the ambiguous reading your artistic practice suggests.
 
Nari Ward: I appreciate your interpretation of this work but I must clarify that the clothes my character is wearing are an entertainer’s outfit, not tropical clothes. I find the images at various times disturbing, humorous and noble. There is a tradition of such images, as you said, and I am interested in referencing this and humanizing the character through evidence of the process. The watering of the plant and the wetting of the character make for an even more problematic reading of what is happening and who is in control. The entertainer is part of a drama in which the viewer is being asked to take a role.
(Extract from interview "Looking Beyond" by Anne Daveri to Nari Ward, published in Mousse Magazine # 38 (April-May 2013), p. 125.)
 

Nari Ward, BEYOND, "Drawbridge" (preparatory sketch), Origin of Good(s), 2013



Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin


Nari Ward, BEYOND, Canned Smiles (preparatory sketch), Iris Hope Keeper, 2013.



Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin


Erik Adigard and Nari Ward, Cannes Smiles, 2013.


Courtesy Erik Adigard and Nari Ward.

Erik Adigard and Nari Ward, Cannes Smiles, 2013.


Courtesy Erik Adigard and Nari Ward.

Nari Ward, BEYOND, Cleansing Pole (preparatory sketch), Iris Hope Keeper, 2013.



Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin


Nari Ward, BEYOND, Iris Cutlass (preparatory sketch), Iris Hope Keeper, 2013.



Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin


Nari Ward, BEYOND, Jacuzzi Bed (preparatory sketch), Iris Hope Keeper, 2013.



Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin


Nari Ward, BEYOND, Ladder Fan (preparatory sketch), Iris Hope Keeper, 2013.



Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin


Nari Ward, BEYOND, Milk Maid (preparatory sketch), Iris Hope Keeper, 2013.



Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin


Nari Ward, BEYOND, Wishing Arena (preparatory sketch), Iris Hope Keeper, 2013.



Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin


BIO

Nari Ward was born in St. Andrews, Jamaica. He moved to New York when he was a teenager, and still lives and works there today. Over the last twenty years his work has been shown in museums and institutions around the world. The poetics of ruin, cast-offs and the worn-out is the distinctive feature of Ward’s work, in which there emerges an almost ‘animistic’ conception of detritus. His installations are realized with found objects: old bits of iron, shopping trolleys, children’s buggies, pieces of paper, shoes, bottles and all kinds of other materials. The artist rummages around in the rubbish tip of indifference and, through a process of retrieval and assemblage, restores vitality and value to objects that seemed to have reached the end of their life and economic cycle. His installations weave new narrative webs, rehabilitating materials and giving them a new spirituality. The objects he uses are full of stories and memories, and express proximity, contingency and a profound sense of transitoriness.

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