Axis Gallery is pleased to present The Known World, a solo exhibition by Nick Shepard that functions as a mini-retrospective, bringing together photographs dating back as far as 2010.

The Known World contains images that vary in subject matter and technique but remain grounded in Shepard’s ongoing concern with how photographs are built, how spaces are assembled, and what is concealed in the process. The show includes work that looks at the contemporary world specifically through the lens of master painting as well as images that explore modern ideas more through abstraction and physical intervention.

Shepard’s early work used Dutch genres and styles as a strategy to reframe the familiar range and complexity of everyday American life. At a distance Blossoms of Silk and Polyester is alluring. But on closer examination it is clear that Shepard has replaced the glorious flowers in paintings like those of Ambrosius Bosschaert with inexpensive stems from the Dollar Tree, while the table’s wood veneer peels away to reveal its cheap construction underneath.

Other works look more directly at the substructure of images and spaces. Several pictures feature unstable or provisional structures. A house mid-reconstruction after a fire, its roof exposed and the disaster still palpably present. A rickety studio construction assembled from scraps of wood, loose screws, and rubber bands, photographed at the edge of collapse. These haphazard structures evoke an instability that hums in the background—sometimes barely noticeable, sometimes impossible to ignore, and quietly exhausting over time.

One of the earliest images in the exhibition makes that tenuousness explicit. The 2010 photograph The Day Laborers (Segundo and Rafael) anchors the exhibition’s engagement with the current political climate. As the Trump administration continues to target day laborers with brown skin and Latino names, these two men stand in for the countless unsung workers who have quite literally built the world around us, even as they themselves are treated as expendable.

In conjunction with the photographs, Shepard constructs a temporary wall down the center of the gallery, creating an obstacle that viewers must navigate in order to see the work. As in previous exhibitions, this intervention both divides the space and calls attention to the gallery’s physical construction. The wall introduces provisional surfaces for hanging while generating new sightlines and unfamiliar spatial relationships between images and viewers.

Not so much a conclusive survey as an opportunity to take stock, The Known World is shaped by movement through the gallery and by what is alternately revealed and blocked from view. Meaning emerges through proximity and interruption, as photographs, walls, and viewers are pressed into shifting relationships with one another.” “Nick Shepard's work ranges from photography to installation and sculpture.

Regardless of medium, he explores the construction and consumption of images, objects, and spaces. He is based in Sacramento, where he is an Associate Professor of Photography at Sacramento State University and an active member of Axis Gallery. Shepard's work has appeared at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Wassaic Project, Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Holland Project, and Site: Brooklyn. He received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC, and his BA in Studio Art and Art History from Carleton College.

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