Selected Press

Huff alternately explores the competing urges for rationality and ecstasy. His site-specific installation Up a Creek and Down River (2014) creates tension within the rarified gallery space—itself a kind of Plato’s cave—with a representation of flowing water that forms a figurative meditation on thought and cultural discourse.

An ordinary hose bib protrudes from the side of a sculptural pedestal. Below it, a meandering serpentine fan of tumblers, glasses and goblets half-filled with water suggests a stream made from the artifacts of civilization. Atop the glasses at varying intervals, exquisitely crafted balsawood boats of diverse shapes and sizes reference the nascent beginnings of ancient trade. Inasmuch as these vessels represent utilitarian objects for exploiting natural resources, they are also an ancient means of communication between distant and diverse populations and a mode of exploring the vastness of the Earth.

Mythologically and symbolically, they represent ways of venturing into the unknown, a journey into the self and an encounter with the Other.

Zak Rosen, June, 2020

Review of Domesticating Disturbances Exhibition

Artist Feature, page 10

ADDITIONAL TEXTS

Review- LACRITIQUE

Jean Claude Le Guic, September 2019

http://www.lacritique.org/article-nathan-huff-quelques-histoires-pour-rever-debout?var_mode=calcul&fbclid=IwAR2-yLJQgRkKNvAmD5n2X-z8UV2Fc0nyIOBN_icLNNZYq93gAJh8C5dAX_I

Essay - Sweeney Art Gallery

Jennifer Frias, Domesticating Disturbances, June - November, 2014

http://artsblock.ucr.edu/Event/348/files/Huff_brochure.pdf

Video Interview - UCR ARTS block

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkTPH8VAYzk

Catalogue - Ridley Tree Museum of Art

Judy Larson, ART WATCH, Young Careers, SB-LA. 2015

Catalogue - Green Gallery

Jeff Rau, Storytellers, March 2014

http://issuu.com/biolaartgallery/docs/storytellers_catologue

Catalogue - Art in Embassies, New Zealand

Nathan Huff and James Brown, Encountering Place, 2011

http://blogs.newzealand.usembassy.gov/xml/aie_booklet_web.pdf

Another starring role in is played by the hard-to-categorize artist Nathan Huff (also currently featured in the one-person show Within Wilds, at Sullivan Goss). The notion of “inquiry” is especially pertinent with Huff’s art, and what you see in one show isn’t necessarily what you get in another. With this art batch, the artist presents imagery of the domesticated, backyard nature, sometimes played straight and sometimes nudging into a zone of slight surrealist intent. 

A series of subtle, smartly rendered watercolors focuses on flowers, stacked stones, hammers cannily juxtaposed with butterflies, a close-up of a weed whacker in action and a jumbo stone hovering above a fan (“Levitating Mass”). Magic realist airs slip into 3D with “Wash Me,” with an actual snake-like coiled hose poised to undo the damage of a mud-smeared gallery wall. 

Lines of reality blur, sneakily, in the huge yet elegant sunflower ode “What do we do now?”, a seemingly direct and anomaly-free floral painting, were it not for the startling/amusing fact that one blossom is on fire. A double-take is in order, visually and perceptually.

The interplay between feeling oneself to be both indoors and outside is delightful.

I spied a swath of Astroturf in one corner and a painted fireplace in another. Also, a drawing of the exterior of the Acheson House placed atop a starry night painting, near yellow and white wallpaper with a geometric design. There is a painting of tousled grass nonchalantly growing on a wooden table. How consciously were you contrasting indoors and outdoors? 

Nathan Huff’s Heavy Hope mixes natural beauty with elements of domesticity, creating a delicate and complete balance that includes installations and sculptures, paintings and drawings. Huff deals with magic. Located in the expansive first floor gallery, the exhibit gives the viewer upended boats, chairs and flowers and stones, table tops with golden, hovering flowers.

There are perfectly nuanced gouache and watercolor works that glow with inner and external light, installations that upend expectations and move toward delight. This, too, is a fairy tale, but one steeped in the alchemy of nature and the ache of the human heart.