Provenance and its Melt is a series of twenty photogravures depicting Manuel Granero Valls’s final bullfight during which he was gored through his left eye and killed. Dozens of photos of Valls’s 1922 final fight exist in popular circulation, in academic archives, and in print media; however, the image of the moment of his goring only appears to have come into existence in 2019; originating on a Russian image sharing website. Provenance and its Melt is the first inclusion of this dubious, violent image into Valls’s visual narrative.
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Artist Video
Résumé
Artist's Statement
Nothing lasts forever, but maybe the impermanence of all things is unfairly colored by our mortality: we live and then we die, existing and suddenly not. Maybe rather than emerging into being and disappearing from history, all things fade in and out of view, oscillating between being and not. My work seeks to express this oscillation by reinvigorating historical practices, objects, and stories using new media and a material-based approach.
Every project revolves around a metaphorically relevant material. I draw archeological objects using excavated matter as medium, I reproduce found photographs using the technology of their time, and I record found sounds on magnetic tape and other obsolete platforms. By maintaining a materialistic fidelity to anachronistic source material, I gently swing the past towards the present. The addition of new media, on the other hand, situates the past in the present. My archeological drawings mimic comic book compositions, my photogravures are digitally manipulated before printing, and my recorded sounds are generatively altered by computer programs. This mingling of contemporary technology and historical material and practices situates the old within the new and results in work that appears to emerge from the past, live in the present, and teeters on the precipice of swinging back into obscurity. This practice aspires to optimistically reimagine our ideas about our own permeance.
Artist's Biography
Nick Mittelstead is an artist based in Philadelphia. He received an MFA in Studio Art and an MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art from The San Francisco Art Institute and a BS in Studio Art from Skidmore College. He has exhibited work in the US and internationally.
Education
2019 San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA MA, History and Theory of Contemporary Art, Honors
2018 San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA MFA, Studio Art
2012 Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY BS, Studio Art, Cum Laude
Awards & Honors
2019 San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA Distinction in Scholarship, Master of Arts Thesis Award
2017 San Francisco, CA Edwin Anthony & Adalaine Boudreaux Cadogan Scholar
Residencies
2020 Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Hyattsville, MD Keyholder Residency
2017
Mudhouse Residency, Agio Ionnis, Crete Resident Artist
Professional Experience
2021 The Mudhouse Residency, Agios Ioannis, Crete Instructor, Summer
Selected Exhibitions
Group
2022 Elements, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Brooklyn, NY
Emerging Artists 2022, Dodomu Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2021 SPRING/BREAK Art Fair, New York, NY
INNOVATIONS, ISEA, Macinac Island, MI
Mudhouse Closing Exhibition, Crete, Greece
Black & White, Fusion Art, online exhibition
Printin', St. Louis Artists' Guild, St. Louis, MO
2020 Objects, CICA Museum, South Korea
2019 Clay & Wood, West Hartford Art League, West Hartford, CT Best in Show
SFAI MFA Exhibition, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
2018 SFAI MFA Exhibition, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
2017 The Murphy Cadogan Award Show, SOMArts, San Francisco, CA
Lightly Heavy, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, CA
On Blue, Swell Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Assembling/Deassembling, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2015 Relief Efforts, Shoestring Press, New York, NY
