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PATRICK NAGATANI (b.1945) - view Patrick Nagatani biography-
The process is like driving from Albuquerque to Los Angeles nonstop… It’s like playing blackjack for 13 hours and not missing a deal... It’s about finding a zone of no thought.
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PATRICK NAGATANI BIOGRAPHY Patrick Nagatani is describing his total absorption in the act of creating his Tape-estry works, in which the castaway material of masking tape becomes a doorway to a meditative process and a unique aesthetic. Each needle of a cactus, each stroke of calligraphy, is a gesture formed from a piece of tape, cut precisely and layered painstakingly over a source photograph. Through the layers of translucent texture, patterning, and dimensionality, the source image emanates. Sometimes part of that source image is unobscured, such as the hands of bodhisattvas (enlightened beings of Buddhist lore). These exquisite works, which can take Nagatani up to one thousand hours to complete, are singular works of art—a departure from the reproducible image for this renowned photographer. He says that when creating a Tape-estry piece, “My entire day is shaped by solitude and what I believe is constructed beauty. I want magic in my life and work.” Magic, and suspended disbelief, are key components for Nagatani. With painter Andrée Tracey in the eighties, he explored our collective fear of nuclear annihilation by staging whimsical scenes in which ordinary citizens, in the form of cutout figures, appeared surprised to see household objects suddenly airborne, suspended with the artifice of visible filaments. Nagatani captured the precise moment of apocalypse with a 20” x 24” Polaroid camera. Born Japanese-American just 13 days after the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagatani finds special resonance with nuclear issues. After joining the University of New Mexico (UNM) photography faculty in 1987, he began work on Nuclear Enchantment, a seminal exposé about New Mexico’s marriage to the nuclear industry. He photographed landmark sites of testing, accidents, and waste, layering metaphor over fact with floating cutouts and radioactive colors, ultimately shattering the role of photographs as proof. The series is political, darkly ironic, and deeply moving. For 20 years, Nagatani was a top professor in UNM’s distinguished photography program. After retiring in 2007, he is now enjoying a new career as full-time artist. He is among New Mexico’s most important and innovative photographers, a rare artist who reinvents himself with each new body of work. A 30-year survey of his work is planned to open at the University Art Museum at UNM in 2009 and to travel, accompanied by the book Desire for Magic.
Selected publications:
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