Studio Visit 2023: Zach Nader

My first studio visit for “Not in Print” features Brooklyn-based artist Zach Nader. I was first introduced to Zach through photographer Christopher Edward Rodriguez after he visited Zach’s last exhibition at Microscope Gallery in 2022, “You are a light machine.” I was drawn to better understand Zach’s work because of how he spoke about his unique visual language. Zach reprograms narratives and perspectives through photography, video, sculpture and painting experiments that remind me of Robert Ashley’s experimental 1979 album “Automatic Writing.” His printed images, found networked images, ads, selfies, memes, news images, etc, synthesize a sense of playfulness and curiosity intertwined in intelligent ways that give notion to imaginative landscapes and hyperreal motifs.

Meet Zach Nader  :) 

I met Zach for his studio visit on a gray spring day in April 2023. We grabbed coffee at a local Brooklyn spot on his corner. There was an actively barbecuing “Meat Market” across the street. The rising smoke drifted in waves around us and in that moment I felt like I had entered this alternate realm of visual reality, as only could be provided by Zach. It felt similar to his video “haunted shapes” (haunted shapes
, 4k single-channel video, color, sound,
 11 minutes, 2022). 

For me, Zach’s work touches on ideas generated by these types of natural conversations within the mind that a viewer experiences through colors, video displays, and textures. There’s a borderline ASMR and synesthesia-evoking effect that happens when one takes a closer look at his materials. For example, “garden rock” includes an image of a streetlamp printed on a rock that, in my mind, portrays an actively melting data landscape. 

And, in “timeline refreshing” I imagine I can hear the music being played on stage and can feel the gentle breath of someone I’m happy to be next to, getting closer.

Initially when I scheduled to visit Zach’s studio, I had planned many technical questions to ask in order to better understand his process. However, when I got there, I felt like I was surrounded by a most precious space filled with someone’s greatest new work and ideas. In a way, I felt at home. I was reminded of how when I was growing up, like around the age of nine years old, I created spaces in my childhood bedroom to either listen to music, read music, and/or just play with my double deck karaoke machine that provided my first understandings of “loops.” 

I enjoyed Zach’s transparency when talking about how he allows creative ideas to flow and shift as they see fit. There was a sense of wonder as he looked at his newest drawings and it provided an opening for me to feel like I was invited to wonder too. These curious moments opened my eyes further to all of his work. Zach also had his favorite books by some of his favorite artists including Sarah Sze, Trisha Baga, Alex Da Corte, and Tala Madani, at arm's reach. I picked up Alex Da Corte’s “Free Roses” and held it in my lap as we continued talking. Zach walked over to his work table and gently flipped through his newest drawings.

“The drawings are an extension of what I was exploring in my last show, ‘You are a light machine.’ This time, taking a field of noise or a grid or something a bit looser as the starting point, rather than a photographic image. They're small right now, studies, sketches, ways of considering what all of these different parts might be and where they might go,” he explained.

I stood by his work table and noticed a large trash can in the corner with playful cutouts. Zach said he might put a light inside to create a large “light lamp.” I watched his video work on his computer screen which included his newest project inspired by Jack Goldstein's “A glass of milk (1972).” 

“I made my own version with a glass of green paint and then started building up layers from there,” he said. I watched various versions of videos wash over one another. The green paint made the perfect green screen.

I felt like I was in the right place at the right time as I walked around and allowed his studio to become one cohesive exhibit. There was something very visceral and at the same time detached from the body of emotions that I felt when I looked at “puzzling things.”

Zach utilizes a palpable inertia that builds and accompanies one when deciding which way to go next. Everything exists by means of his imagination and invites a larger spectrum of experience for any observer. He even draws little ghosts here and there, perpetuating his own ethereal presence of play. His color palettes are more nuanced than decidedly strict in how they flourish outside of their frames, including hints of neon outlines that give an extra pop of surprise. He is weary of keeping you still for too long, and most excited to share his own evolving practice of experimentation. 

https://www.zachnader.art/

@znader