Background

James Nares was born in 1953 in London, United Kingdom.

Education

James Nares studied at Chelsea College of Arts in London from 1972 to 1973.

A year later, he pursued his education at the School of Visual Arts in New York City where he spent two years.

Career

James Nares started his career after he relocated from London to New York City in 1974. Soon, he blended in ‘no-wave’ art scene of the city and helped to unite such personalities as Charlie Ahearn and Jenny Holzer into the artists’ group Colab. He also tried his hand in music performing in a no-wave group James Chance and the Contortions and in with Jim Jarmusch in the Del-Byzanteens.

Although Nares worked in a variety of mediums, he was known throughout the 1970s as a creator of short sculptural-related minimal art films which he described as ‘kinetic investigations’. So, in 1978, the artist issued 82-minute color Super-8 film ‘Rome 78’ in which he featured Lydia Lunch and Patti Astor.

By the 1980s, James Nares had shifted from filmmaking to painting. Using brushes designed by himself, the artist began to create large canvases on which he depicted stokes made with a single gestural movement. The paintings which boosted his popularity in the course of time were so detailed and deep that they seemed to be three dimensional.

Since then, James Nares has exhibited both his paintings and video projects nationally and internationally, including the shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Hamiltons Gallery in London as well as at various art spaces in Germany, Ireland, and Spain. Since 1991, the artist has been represented by the Paul Kasmin Gallery.

Nares’s recent video works include a 2011 film ‘Street’ in which he fell back upon the extreme slow-motion technology in order to capture the tiny details of the street events, and a 2016 project ‘Portraits’ where he shot his colleagues, friends, and family members sitting against the simple background, including his daughters, Sasha, Zarina and Jahanara as well as Amy Taubin Douglas Crimp, Glenn O’Brien, Jim Jarmusch, and Walter Robinson.

Nowadays, James Nares lives and works in New York City.

Achievements

• 

  James Nares is an accomplished artist who managed to demonstrate his gift through such mediums as painting, filmmaking, and even music.
  
  Recognized by art circles and simple viewers, Nares’s artworks are acquired in the permanent collections of such prestigious art spaces and galleries like the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, all in New York City, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo among others.
  
  In 2014, the American publishing house Rizzoli issued a comprehensive monograph on Nares's life and art. The same year, Nares's painting ‘Take 118 - Blue Black’ was purchased at Christie's in New York City for $87,500.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Prince V

  • Prince II

  • Wooster

  • Bowery

  • River is Rising

  • X-Ray

  • Three Aces

  • Change Up

  • Straightaway

  • You Don't Say 3

  • Early Days

  • Rust to Dust

  • Untitled

  • Stop 4

  • Untitled

  • Roland's Way

  • Go

  • No.12 Take 28

  • Terra

  • Before the Rain

Views

Quotations: "It’s a fine balance between design and the thing making itself happen. The stroke has to have complete precision to work."

"I found that the camera as I use it is a powerful instrument, and I could abuse it. I could chose to show the parts that make people look stupid, or funny, which everybody does. I steered away from anything like that, and looked for the moments that are kind of human, and the kind of thing that anyone could identify with, because you’re looking at yourself inevitably when you look at anybody else."

"I love that nothing is hidden."

Membership

James Nares was a founding member of the artists’ group Colab.

Personality

On the opinion of a writer Glenn O'Brien, James Nares is a “scientific painter” whose each work is “a research project, […] a game, but [a game in which] the rules are the rules of physics.”

Physical Characteristics: James Nares is a handsome tall modest man.

Quotes from others about the person

• "James might sound a bit British, but he’s a New Yorker. He’s very concerned with experiment, and testing limits, pushing the envelope of perception." Glenn O’Brien, writer

Connections

James Nares has three daughters named Sasha, Zarina, and Jahanara.

Daughter:

Sasha Nares

Daughter:

Zarina Nares

Daughter:

Jahanara Nares