In partnership with the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, CMCA presents the inaugural exhibition of the 2018 Ellis-Beauregard Fellows—artist team Wade Kavanaugh (Bethel, Maine) and Stephen B. Nguyen (Portland, Maine). Kavanaugh and Nguyen were selected as the first recipients of the Fellowship award through a blind jury process from a pool of more than 200 applicants by jurors Jeffrey Peabody, Vice President and Director, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York City, and Alison de Lima Greene, Isabel Brown Wilson Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas.
Working as collaborators for more than a decade, Kavanaugh and Nguyen have distinguished themselves with an approach to installation work that is highly inventive, immersive and fully in command of their materials. The simplicity of their chosen materials – paper and wood – reminds one how far a finely tuned imagination can take one when engaging with a site.
In accepting the EBF Fellowship, Kavanaugh stated, “Stephen and I are honored to receive this award from the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation. Our collaboration began twelve years ago at The Map Room in Portland and we look forward to the gift of time to create more work in Maine, beginning with the exhibit at CMCA. We’re excited to engage with the new building at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art and grateful to make a project of scale so close to home.”
The award reflects the vision of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation founders, artists David Ellis and Joan Beauregard, to support artists with the precious gift of time, and to encourage, expand and sustain the courageous and imaginative dialogue that is fundamental to the arts.
Wade Kavanaugh + Stephen B. Nguyen | Hubris Atë Nemesis
Artists’ Statement
One of the foundations of our collaborative art practice is the act of shared seeing. We find common ground by actively investigating our own visual reference points, memories and assumptions. Whenever we make a new work, we also try to activate the common visual vocabulary of the local community and in this way, we hope to include our audience in the process of our shared seeing. For this work at CMCA, the subject matter is borrowed from Maine’s rugged coastal landscape and the tradition of artists who have explored the interplay of its natural forces, people and built environment.
This work is a departure for us in two ways. We began collaborating in 2005 and all of our previous works have been made of paper (this piece is made entirely of wood). Second, it is the first time in one of our installations that the path through the piece has become an active element. Our goal was to find a way to translate the visual language we have developed in paper to a new material, but the impact of incorporating the pathway into the work was a surprise. Typically, the viewer makes contact with the gallery floor when they navigate our installations, but at CMCA the path contributes to the experience of the work as a whole. The viewer is made aware of the movement of the artwork through their own movement over the undulating boardwalk. By unifying this relationship between the “path” and the “piece,” the viewer is completely immersed in the work, removing the layer of separation between art and viewer.
The interaction between the “path” and the “piece” lends this work an unexpected narrative arc, that of “Hubris, Atë, Nemesis,” familiar in Greek Tragedies, but maybe less so to most of us. Hubris, characterized as an arrogant confidence, transforms to Atë, a ruinous folly or madness, then ultimately to Nemesis, a force of retribution that resets the natural order. Like many paintings of the Maine coast, we hope this work captures a moment of suspense in a dynamic system—a snapshot with an uncertain future—and that it appears to be unwritten what the restored natural order should or might become.
Press
Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B Nguyen’s installations reimagine ways of seeing in stir, July 1, 2020
Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen’s Hubris, Atë, Nemesis in The Building Centre, July 15, 2019
Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen recreate Maine’s rugged coastal landscape by using wood at CMCA in urdesign, July 15, 2019
Hubris Atë Nemesis installation curves up Maine contemporary art gallery by Bridget Cogley in dezeen, July 14, 2019
wade kavanaugh + stephen b. nguyen install immersive tidal wave of wood at CMCA by Juliana Neira in designboom, July 2, 2019
An artistic tidal wave as nature fights back by Murray Whyte in the Boston Globe, May 9, 2019
Hubris Ate Nemesis at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in the Distracted Wanderer, April 26, 2019
From Fettuccine to Hubris by Kay Stephens in the Penobscot Bay Pilot, April 8, 2019
Water churns and melts in CMCA’s 2 major exhibits by Daniel Kany in the Portland Press Herald, April 7, 2019
Events
Opening Reception | Saturday, March 23, 5-7pm
Artist Talk | Saturday, March 23, 4pm
Photos: Dave Clough Photography