Bernice Steinbaum Gallery

Nick Gilmore: Fantastic Art Furniture That You Didn’t Know You Needed

Working with tools and wood helps me to approach a sense of peace. The materials and process follow a rejuvenating logic and humbling risk. Once the plan is underway there is usually time along the way to think about many things. Lately I have been thinking quite a lot about the idea of "function," and how it is often used to describe concepts and objects in a strictly utilitarian sense. I'm interested in blurring that line. Is it possible for a piece of furniture to provide a utilitarian function while simultaneously acting as a comment on social justice and evoking an aura of transcendence? Art, craft, activism, spirituality, utility: they are all facets, among countless others, of our collective human merry-go-round. While it may be helpful to categorize these concepts in order to better understand each, I feel that ultimately my inner world is fractured, and- by extension- my outer world, if I keep them compartmentalized. Through their integration I feel closer to whole, and somehow more hopeful. 

I work mostly in wood and paper: sculpture, furniture, and printmaking. Conceptual points of focus include the interconnectedness of the natural and built environments, as well as blurring the divisions between utilitarian, aesthetic, and spiritual function. Current projects include finely crafted furniture invoking Shaker philosophy in a context of systemic racism. Much of my work incorporates old growth Dade County pine (pinus elliottii var. densa), a rare local South Florida tree which was logged nearly to extinction by early development; the material I use has been salvaged from my own 1926 Miami home and many other, usually demolished, Miami structures. Over 20 years in the construction trades largely inform this work. This material signifies the perennial boom of developers and tourists seeking fortune and paradise in this land of tropical paradox. Much of South Florida’s natural infrastructure has been destroyed in favor of concrete and neon; this salvaged wood embodies fraught industrialism and ecological mortality. My printmaking background has led to an ongoing series of in situ embossed prints, often of cracked or degrading street surfaces in culturally or environmentally sensitive areas. The impressions describe a place as it is in that moment, yet also transform it into something different. Mostly overlooked, these elements are transformed into aesthetic objects- themselves fragile bas relief sculptures documenting a place susceptible to the collective whims of mankind and an indifferent Nature with ever higher rising tides. Employing these materials, and their history, is an attempt to document the present, as well as interconnect the utilitarian to the transcendental. In effect, the source material takes on a new role as a monument, a ritual, and a harbinger of the Anthropocene.

Press release written by Nick Gilmore

To schedule a private viewing of Fantastic Art Furniture That You Didn’t Know You Needed please call (305) 573-2700.