Artist’s Statement

Painter Nate Masse creates layered figurative compositions that compress visual details from multiple moments into a single, sensuous image. For Massé, his “work is not about portraiture in the traditional sense…Aspects of individuals act as building blocks for allegorical figures.” The glance, in duration a shorter gaze, refers again to psychoanalysis. The gaze is an awareness of both viewing and one’s existence as a visible object, a potential slippage in identification between subject and object, self and other. This kind of slippage is present in the way in which Massé layers and fragments the human form. The reflection of self in an object gives that object the power of memory and aspiration, and forces the viewer into a conversation with that power.”

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