A Tension Worth Keeping Because the Drift is Always There presents a gaggle of latest work by Nathaniel Oliver that follows a solid of characters over the course of a day as they navigate a single panorama. Combining imagery from his travels; figures primarily based on buddies, family members, and, on this exhibition, his personal likeness; objects from his analysis into the fabric tradition of West Africa; and parts of fantasy, Oliver layers references from our world into work that work like speculative fictions. This mosaic of interrelated vignettes gives solely glimpses into his characters’ narratives. By permitting us to think about what occurs within the area and time between the panels, the artist invitations the viewer into his story of a neighborhood preventing for self-preservation within the face of hazard lurking simply exterior the body.
We Want Our Paranoia to Preserve Us Protected (2025) attracts on the dystopian science fiction of Octavia Butler: the portray’s central topic, a girl pouring a jerry can of water on a hearth to ensure the group she is touring with can’t be tracked, comes from Butler’s 1993 novel Parable of the Sower, which imagines the 12 months 2025 in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. The portray is an allegory for the negotiation between the cruel realities of what it takes to outlive and luxury, represented by the figures shrouded in blankets. Depictions of textiles have persistently appeared in Oliver’s work as moments of abstraction in addition to references to materials histories; right here, their geometric patterns allude to Oliver’s household’s lengthy historical past of quilting.
In The Break Off (2025), a gaggle flees an unknown menace, their shadows projected by a hearth onto a rock wall behind them like these in Plato’s cave. Figures transfer between canvases—Might It Be This Simple (2025) facilities on the sibyl, a personality whose presence right here calls again to her look in Oliver’s earlier work. Sporting a canary-yellow costume, she seems to be askance towards one thing past the bounds of the canvas, if misplaced in thought or the center of a imaginative and prescient. A refrain seems to be down at her from a set of stairs: are these girls judging the sibyl, who has spilled a glass of crimson wine on the superbly stored garden, or are they in awe of her composure? All through, Oliver performs with ranges of realism, rendering some passages in flat colour—the pink balloons, the yellow costume—and others in painstaking element.
A lot of Oliver’s latest compositions are without delay portrait and panorama, deep areas the place wilderness is the setting for characterological research occurring on the airplane closest to the viewer. The horizon is omnipresent, most prominently in It Will Take Some Planning (2025), which juxtaposes a mountainous sprawl that recedes into the gap with two figures who appear to face straight in entrance of the viewer. The work is a double portrait of the artist in two completely different guises—Oliver in dialog with alternate variations of himself. The lady on the heart of One thing on the Horizon (2025) is drawn from an outdated {photograph} of his grandmother. The saturated foliage and periwinkle sky behind her makes evident the affect of the summary landscapes of Richard Mayhew, whose imaginary vistas problem the historic style’s declare to objectivity. Bountiful Blue (2025) exhibits this world as soon as Oliver’s characters have left the body: even with out actors, the panorama tells its personal story.
