Nathan Baker is a genius

So basically I think that every artist I collect is a genius. No exception here. Nathan Baker's Rupture series is absolutely brilliant. For me, it depicts a basic principle by which I try to conduct my life: live outside the expected ... sometimes it takes a disruption to remind me of that.

In Being and Time, Heidegger describes the “Present at Hand” as a situation that arises when things break down; when the routine of life pauses and the door is opened for basic, unmediated humanity to step in and replace the automata of contemporary rigor. Such moments are inflections on how we function on a most basic level, without the societal and psychological influences that we have grown to rely upon.

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The next group of photographs depicts scenarios in which people are in this static state - after being presented with a stimulus, yet before a conscious reaction. This is the moment of the Present at Hand, when the things we have taken for granted step up and remind us of our humanity. The pictures present a perfectly eerie stillness – one that pervades throughout the scenario and represents the shattering of one’s assumed identity in relation to their constructed context.

Nathan shows at Randall Scott Gallery.