Nick Mittelstead

Lives and works in Philadelphia, PA, USA

Artist statement

Nothing lasts forever, but maybe the impermanence of 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. My work begins with a metaphorically charged material treated with historical accuracy. I sculpt landscape forms using earthen materials, I display videos on broadcast monitors, I record sounds on magnetic tape and other obsolete platforms. By maintaining a materialistic fidelity to anachronistic source material, I am free to then gently swing the past towards the present using new media. Sculptural forms come from 3D prints, videos from AI, and recorded sounds are generatively produced. This mingling of contemporary technology and historical materials and practices situates the old within the new and results in work that appears to emerges from the past, lives in the present, and teeters on the precipice of swinging back into obscurity. These works aspire to optimistically reimagine ideas about our own permeance.

Artwork