NATE ETHINGTON
BOOK OF MATCHES
FEBRUARY 28 - MARCH 29, 2025
OPENING RECEPTION
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2025
5-8 PM
ON VIEW
FEBRUARY 28 - MARCH 29, 2025
FOR INQUIRES
Please contact hello@chefasprojects.com
PRESS
Chefas Projects is delighted to present Book of Matches, a series of new paintings by Nate Ethington for his first solo exhibition with the gallery. Employing a deeply layered process of hiding and revealing gestural marks and traces of handwriting, Book of Matches explores the poetics of connection and communication through the philosophy of a match.
For Ethington, the match – with its intense yet fleeting light – parallels the delicate dance of give and take in our encounters with others. The light of a match’s flame gives its user the opportunity to both reveal and perceive – sometimes serving as a beacon for reconnection, at other times acting as a cry for help. At the same time, that exact flame can be both life-giving as well as destructive in its potential to set things further ablaze.
Book of Matches pushes these notions of dualities and contradictions, of both carefully sharing and closely guarding one’s intimacies through its gestures of texture and mark making. Emphasizing intuitive compositions of thick impasto focal points over neutral fields of color, traces of written words and subtle scribbles suggest the haziness of fleeting thoughts and memories of conversations with no determinable beginning or end.
The opening reception for Book of Matches will take place at Chefas Projects on Friday, February 28, 2025, from 5-8 pm. Located in Portland, Oregon, at 134 SE Taylor Street on the first floor of the Taylor Works building, Chefas Projects invites the public to explore this unique exhibition, which will be on view through March 29, 2025.
ARTWORK
INSTALLATION IMAGES
© CHEFAS PROJECTS
Photo credit: Mario Gallucci