Nathan Coley

“ ‘Sawn-Off’ is the joint title for six artists with a connection to Glasgow who will be exhibiting at four different locations in Stockholm, in Norrtälje konsthall and at Uppsala konstmuseum in the forthcoming weeks. Anyone who wants to catch up with all the exhibitions can join the bus tour that is organized on the opening day, March 9. The tour departs from Galleri Index on Sankt Paulsgatan 3 at 12.30 and ends at Enkehuset at 19.30. /…/ Nathan Coley’s slide projections at Gallery Index show churches and factories that are blocked and empty like modern ruins, while a speaker’s voice speaks broadly about them as grand architectural projects. A video shows images of waiting: the cinema before the light goes out, the view from a car at a red light, an elevator door sliding up. ‘Down-time’ Nathan calls it, down-time or dead-time, the moment before the real disappointment begins.”

Translated quote from DN, 1996-03-08, Anne Hedén. Read full text in Swedish.

“More subtle and intelligent is Nathan Coley, who at Galleri Index shows a diabolical travesty on the classic slide presentation. A series of slides of more or less decayed buildings is accompanied by a speaker’s voice that discusses what we see as artistically well-thought-out architecture. Coley thus makes a subtle play between image and rhetoric, which leaves the viewer in a productive uncertainty: between what we see and what we say, an invisible distancing effect is constantly inserted, which drastically demonstrates the contingent and conventional in all ideas of how we ‘read’ pictures.”

Translated quote from SvD, 1996-03-23, Sven-Olof Wallenstein. Read full text in Swedish.