HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS
Nicolas Shake + Levi Robb, 2020
Digital Exhibition 07
"I don't know where we're going. I don't even always know what I'm looking at. Some of it moves me and some of it scares me and some of it leaves me at sea, disoriented, maybe already obsolete."
- Olivia Laing, " Say You're In: Wolfgang Tillmans." Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020).
Nicolas Shake + Levi Robb, 2020
Digital Exhibition 07
"I don't know where we're going. I don't even always know what I'm looking at. Some of it moves me and some of it scares me and some of it leaves me at sea, disoriented, maybe already obsolete."
- Olivia Laing, " Say You're In: Wolfgang Tillmans." Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020).
You are driving on the 14 headed towards Palmdale while making your way to I-80 and Des Moines. You are by yourself; it is around dusk, and the radio is silent while you travel through the flat endless landscape. The sound of the breeze passing through the window guides your pace as the sun slowly falls behind, casting your shadow east. Your mind begins to wonder. There is nothing ahead of you as you travel within this moment of colorful gray, just flatness. The shadows grow towards darkness as the landscape begins to collect reflections of the rising twilight and your thoughts become brightened from the darkness. The objects within the landscape become re-invented as your mind wonders with every mile. The thing you considered for so long becomes erased and the sentiment of something new breathes life into the unknown landscape ahead. As the breeze begins to slow and the car comes to a stop, you listen…
walking has become a constant
a frenetic pause
embedded in the subconscious
unnecessary visits
items leftover
body is set in motion
that rhythm has been broken
sensory instances of déjà vu
response and reuse
artifact collection
moment of freedom
built from the empty ground
collage nature
no evidence of that
forgotten areas
walking has become a constant
a frenetic pause
embedded in the subconscious
unnecessary visits
items leftover
body is set in motion
that rhythm has been broken
sensory instances of déjà vu
response and reuse
artifact collection
moment of freedom
built from the empty ground
collage nature
no evidence of that
forgotten areas
Self-isolated viewing of HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS in Little Italy, Omaha:
Photos Courtesy of Dan Schwalm
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Photos Courtesy of Levi Robb & Nicolas Shake
Compiled video from Nicolas Shake & Levi Robb:
Video Courtesy of Nicolas Shake & Levi Robb
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Photos Courtesy of Levi Robb & Nicolas Shake
Video from Nicolas Shake & Levi Robb:
Video Courtesy of Nicolas Shake
Email conversation between Nicolas Shake, Levi Robb, and Mike Nesbit regarding this digital exhibition:
About the Artists:
Nicolas Shake is a Los Angeles based artist who was educate at Claremont Graduate University (MFA) and Rhode Island School of Design (BFA). Working with numerous media ranging from onsite sculptures in the deserts surrounding greater LA to painting, photography and gallery based sculpture. His work is pastoral and post-apocalyptic one foot firmly planted in historical painting and the other in traditional still-life, so it is entropic and sanguine, gleeful, despondent, and matter of fact. It comes at a point in time when the fiction of Nature as a refuge is no longer viable, persuasive or convincing. But rather than rehash this fact the work celebrates the pastorals everyday ordinariness, the capacity for the viewer to experience something wondrous amidst decline. Focusing on the cast-off household, and utilitarian, items that show up in the desert on the outskirts Los Angeles. His work transforms rubbish into something unexpected, capturing and conveying its uncanny power and peculiar beauty. Looking at history of impermanence, and emphasize the irrational concept of value. . He has participated in numerous group and solo exhibition including exhibitions at Western Project in Los Angeles, and Vast Space Project in Las Vegas, and the Barrick Museum of Art at UNLV. In 2019 he was an artist in residence at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas.
www.nicolasshake.com
Levi Robb is an artist and architect based in Iowa. Robb’s work explores the entanglement of person and context — time and atmosphere. With a focus on the formal objectivity of place, the work is influenced by human interface with environment, landscape, and artifact. The emanation of the work embodies a dichotomy between permanent and impermanent objects and mark making. Human relationship with site-based artifacts, and the interrelationship between the material and immaterial, are often common underlying themes throughout his work. Through the analysis, manipulation and reinterpretation of latent items and specific spatial conditions the work takes on a continual timeline with an inherent connection to the past. Acts of drawing, printmaking, sculpture and installation become tools for him to reassign aesthetic value to detritus and discarded material. This process yields a unique body of formal objects that reflect on material culture and concretize the idea of contemporary relics.
Robb holds a B.Arch. from Iowa State University and has spent periods of time studying and working in Rome, Italy and the American Southwest. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in both public and private collections. In 2018 Robb completed artist residencies at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Strong City, Kansas and at Seljavegur in Reykjavik, Iceland.
www.levirobb.com
Nicolas Shake is a Los Angeles based artist who was educate at Claremont Graduate University (MFA) and Rhode Island School of Design (BFA). Working with numerous media ranging from onsite sculptures in the deserts surrounding greater LA to painting, photography and gallery based sculpture. His work is pastoral and post-apocalyptic one foot firmly planted in historical painting and the other in traditional still-life, so it is entropic and sanguine, gleeful, despondent, and matter of fact. It comes at a point in time when the fiction of Nature as a refuge is no longer viable, persuasive or convincing. But rather than rehash this fact the work celebrates the pastorals everyday ordinariness, the capacity for the viewer to experience something wondrous amidst decline. Focusing on the cast-off household, and utilitarian, items that show up in the desert on the outskirts Los Angeles. His work transforms rubbish into something unexpected, capturing and conveying its uncanny power and peculiar beauty. Looking at history of impermanence, and emphasize the irrational concept of value. . He has participated in numerous group and solo exhibition including exhibitions at Western Project in Los Angeles, and Vast Space Project in Las Vegas, and the Barrick Museum of Art at UNLV. In 2019 he was an artist in residence at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas.
www.nicolasshake.com
Levi Robb is an artist and architect based in Iowa. Robb’s work explores the entanglement of person and context — time and atmosphere. With a focus on the formal objectivity of place, the work is influenced by human interface with environment, landscape, and artifact. The emanation of the work embodies a dichotomy between permanent and impermanent objects and mark making. Human relationship with site-based artifacts, and the interrelationship between the material and immaterial, are often common underlying themes throughout his work. Through the analysis, manipulation and reinterpretation of latent items and specific spatial conditions the work takes on a continual timeline with an inherent connection to the past. Acts of drawing, printmaking, sculpture and installation become tools for him to reassign aesthetic value to detritus and discarded material. This process yields a unique body of formal objects that reflect on material culture and concretize the idea of contemporary relics.
Robb holds a B.Arch. from Iowa State University and has spent periods of time studying and working in Rome, Italy and the American Southwest. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in both public and private collections. In 2018 Robb completed artist residencies at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Strong City, Kansas and at Seljavegur in Reykjavik, Iceland.
www.levirobb.com