Artist: Nathan Walsh

Friedrichs Pontone presents a selection of works by Nathan Walsh, his first exhibition with the gallery. Commonly depicting bustling cities, Walsh is celebrated for his close attention to detail. This results in beautiful representations of architecture, urban landscapes, and unique perspective. The exhibition features six preparatory studies and one painting, representing Walsh's mathematical artistic process.

Nathan Walsh is a contemporary realist painter residing and working in Wales, United Kingdom. Walsh topographically collects his composition by traveling to big cities to create a visual compilation using 1000 images. He often makes very intricate and colossal works, inventing his own perspectival space by controlling the nature of the world that he presents to the viewer. Walsh invites the audience into lively environments, surrounded by immaculately presented buildings; such as modern skyscrapers, traditional cathedrals, and ornate libraries. His adoration of architecture undoubtedly fuels his inspiration, providing endless possibilities.

In Walsh’s drawings, it’s evident that he has mastered the portrayal of spatial depth using linear perspective. Lines transfigurate the space achieving an uncanny quality. The architectural approach, as he experiments with perspectives, goes beyond tradition, and sometimes proves similar to Leanardo Da Vinci’s studies.

The composition is layered, and the drafted dimensionality confronts our point of view by deconstructing what we think reality is. We are able to catch the glimpse of the metamorphosing world that Walsh has built with multitudes of narratives caught in a single frame. Remaining marks add into the configurative transience of exoskeletal forms, forming a portal to the artist’s representation of warped space and time.

Walsh’s hyper-realistic paintings have a larger than life essence, with the use of a vivid color pallet. The visionary intensity and immediacy of the viewer to be present gives his work novelty. Clear-cut details transform the panoramic capture transcending past our accustomed dimensionality of existence. The painterly nature of the works create sophisticated, almost surrealistic, works of art, re-introducing us to the nature of physical existence.

About the artist

Nathan Walsh (b. 1972, Lincoln, United Kingdom) received a BFA from the University Liverpool, England, and completed an MFA at the University of Hull , East Riding of Yorkshire, England.

His work has been included in various gallery and museum exhibitions since 1995. Most recently, his work was exhibited at The European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona, Spain (2024), an international show at the institution displaying urban landscapes in art.