The paintings feature portraits of everyday figures from the past combined with imagery borrowed from modern magazine advertisements in layered effects meant to confuse time or place and complicate the reading of a simple, wistful narrative. It is through this layered and collage-like process that Nowlin explores the rift between the past and the present; between an era of collective aspirations with an era of corporately manufactured desires. Also included in the exhibition are smaller works on paper and a textile installation that reinforces the associative connections between time and place, national memory, and class narratives evoked by the larger paintings.
Familiar Strangers was Devon Nowlin’s second solo exhibition at Artspace 111 and is accompanied by a catalogue review of ten years of Nowlin’s work, supported by an essay from Dr. Mark Thistlethwaite, the Kay and Velma Kimbell Chair of Art History at Texas Christian University.