Fragments d’une petite mort

VISUAL ART by Nathan Rubinfeld

Artist’s Statement: For me the slightest scrap of paper opens a universe of imaginings, a stain on the wall becomes a cosmos of nostalgic associations. Living in childhood, a melancholy way of life, nostalgia is a permanent emotion or state of mind. Nostalgia is not driven by memory as much as it is driven by the inevitability of forgetting. Knowing this, tissue-paper shreds drive me to reconstruct the sheet of paper, to bind the torn pages together again in a process which will inevitably fail, as some pages will be found missing and words will have been erased. To live in nostalgia is to turn the world into a sepulcher, a memento mori of grand proportions, as each and every image, association, and relationship is but a mirror, a place for the projection of memory and all that has come to pass. It is to live as though dead; to pass amongst a world of shades, having already made Hades my home. Nostalgia is a game that will never—and can never—end.

A native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Nathan Rubinfeld (MAPH’14) studied in the Visual and Critical Studies department at the School for Visual Arts in NYC before transferring to Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. At Hampshire, he completed his undergraduate studies with an analytic, art historical essay as well as a thesis show of his collage work. Following graduation, he took part in the Summer Institute in Art Museum Studies through the Smith College Museum of Art. He returned home to Santa Fe, where he volunteered, interned in museums, and worked in sales at a local fine art gallery before making the move to Chicago and beginning the nine whirlwind months of MAPH.



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