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Thu, Mar 13, 2025
The upcoming solo exhibition by the artist will also feature a new commission
August 22, 2025–January 11, 2026, the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University will devote a gallery to the art of Columbus-born, New York-based Nanette Carter. Recent works will be accompanied by a piece commissioned by the multidisciplinary contemporary arts space for this exhibition.
The language of abstraction has been at the center of Carter’s painterly and material explorations since the late 1970s. Coming from the lineage of the Black American abstract art tradition, Carter’s work has been influenced by artistic, art historical and other cultural expressions, from jazz to Abstract Expressionism and Japanese prints.
Over time, Carter began experimenting with unconventional materials with an increased interest in the depth and complexity that departing from the two-dimensional surface afforded. In the 1990s, Carter began using the industrial material Mylar and has focused on the possibilities of this material since. It allows her to incorporate transparency and spatialize her explorations of color and form.
Nanette Carter, Shifting Perspectives #5, 2024. Oil on Mylar, 56 x 70 1/2 inches. © Nanette Carter. Courtesy Berry Campbell, New York.
Carter’s use of abstraction expresses the way she experiences a world marked by violence, social unrest, political upheaval, and the invasive presence of media in everyday life, as in her ongoing series Shifting Perspectives. As the artist has stated, her work has been concerned with “the drama of nature in tandem with the drama of human nature.”
If social unrest is the catalyst for some of Carter’s series, the conceptual and aesthetic pursuit of balance is equally important in her practice, serving as a counterweight to the impending sensation of collapse reflected in some paintings. Titles such as Cantilevered, Weight, With Grace, and Aplomb, Destabilizing allude to this.
The selection of recent works in the Wex exhibition will be enhanced by a new commission for this presentation: a continuation of the Shifting Perspectives series. In Carter’s words, “it speaks to the seismic changes that we have experienced over the past decade. Whether we are looking at climate change, lack of civility, a global pandemic… it has been a most destabilizing time.”
An Exhibitions Opening Celebration will take place Friday, August 22, 5–9 PM.
A Wex Open House happening Sunday, August 25 from 4 to 7 PM will welcome students back to campus with activities including artmaking and gallery experiences with educators.
More events will be announced in the weeks leading up to the exhibition. Updates can be found here at wexarts.org.
Nanette Carolyn Carter lives and works in New York City. She was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1956, and grew up in in Montclair, New Jersey, where she was introduced to art as a child through a painting class at the Montclair Museum. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio, majoring in Studio Art and Art History, and studied abroad in Perugia, Italy. While in Italy, she traveled around Europe and North Africa.
Carter received her MFA at the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, New York, where currently she is a tenured associate adjunct professor of art, teaching Drawing/ Mixed Media classes and serving as the coordinator for drawing in the undergraduate program.
