Nathaniel C. Praska – By The Skin of Our Teeth
On view 15 March to 15 April 2024
The MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture is delighted to present By the Skin of Our Teeth, a solo exhibition featuring the work of American contemporary artist Nathaniel C. Praska. This exhibition represents the inaugural installment of MPAC’s virtual exhibition series and serves as the artist’s debut solo showcase with MPAC.
By the Skin of Our Teeth presents scenes of difficulty, if not disaster, and the objects left behind as records of bare survival. Inspired by a popular American idiom and biblical reference, the title of the exhibition calls attention to both human frailty and fortitude. Praska’s large canvases, painted with hand-made oil sticks, forefront the forces that expose life to death: off-the-grid landscapes, shoddy housing, a rundown Bronco, an empty gas canister, and monstrous teeth. These objects, both as the remnants of historically failed promises and the signs of survival, confront viewers in an eye-to-eye meeting with the present. Why now? Why here?
About the Artist:
(b. 1985, Portland, OR)
Nathaniel C. Praska’s layered paintings exude with unfiltered immediacy of graffiti beneath an urban bridge. His subject matter; discarded items, gasoline canisters, and abandoned places, morph into enigmatic symbols representing anxiety, absurdity, isolation, and paranoia. Praska positions these objects alongside monstrous analogies, forging a visual language that encapsulates the mounting recognition of societal despondency and the precariousness of the post-1980s socio-economic paradigm in the United States.
His work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including, Rose Center for the Arts Forsberg Gallery at Lower Columbia College in Longview, Washington, Cerritos College Art Gallery in Norwalk, California, Mount Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon [forthcoming, 2024] and The Arts Center in Corvallis, Oregon [forthcoming, 2024]. Praska has received grants and residencies from the GLEAN Artist Residency Program (2023), Oregon Arts Commission (2023), Regional Arts and Culture Council (2022), Rockland Woods (2021) and The Calligram Foundation (2012) and has exhibited his work throughout the United States. Praska lives and works in Portland, Oregon with his wife and their son.
