Kole Nichols
Even When It’s Dark Out
January 10 - February 22, 2025
215 N Limestone
“Unlike other animals, man was made to stand erect so that he could gaze at the stars... We are at the center of the material universe but at the perimeter of the spiritual universe and we are doomed to watch the spectacle of the celestial dance from afar,”
- Eliot Weinberger, The Stars
“... at the same time the boundary between the empyrean and the terrestrial is established, separating them but at the same time uniting them.”
- Sergius Bulgakov, Unfading Light
Thermodynamics teaches us that all observable action in the known universe unfolds as a knotted, marching poem of separations and gaps. Were it not for the essential distances between particles, for the energy and heat differentials across molecules dividing them as individuals, nothing at all could happen. Potential energy yields a lesson that proves difficult for the human spirit to digest: separation precipitates togetherness. In separation, when the stage is set and the conditions ripen, the conversion between potential energy and kinetic connection is inevitable. Under careful attention, within any gap an unseen relationship between the divorced can be enunciated. Paradoxically, through the naming and distinction of the divided, the two can be made closer.
In Even When It’s Dark Out, Kole Nichols explores divisions of space and the thresholds that define boundaries. Through a process of internal reflection on memories of traversing the south, Nichols distorts familiar architectural motifs such as gates, windows, and doors into amalgamated compositions gathered from personal recollections both vague and vivid. Alongside these terrestrial thresholds, Nichols mounts a parallel exploration of non-physical boundaries through loose constructions of starfields, maps, and charts. Embracing an observational approach to the construction of his paintings and etchings, Nichols presents a series of works that explores the limits between interior and exterior. These investigations of the physical and the nonphysical unfold together within a unified formal language, reflecting the artist’s internal journey to establish an ordered relationship between the earthly and the spiritual.
- Harrison Wayne