The Studio as Art

Listen to this article

Like many artists, Kenji Nakayama and Pat Falco treat their shared studio as a site for creation and display. The two have worked in the same space for the past three years in the Distillery building in South Boston. Unlike a cleanly arranged white cube gallery, they have created an environment that speaks to the varied contexts of their artistic processes. Their finished artworks and works in progress hang side-by-side with pieces they’ve collected from their peers, and throughout the space are readily available conceptual and material sources: from paint cans to exhibition catalogs, political posters to Easter ornaments, saws to surfboards.

Current: Kenji Nakayama & Pat Falco, at The University Hall Gallery at UMass Boston through Jan. 5, 2018, will take form as an evolving installation, bringing elements from the artists’ studio into the gallery to create a site for active artistic production and presentation. Modeled after their shared space, they will set up work stations to make art, adding to the display throughout the exhibition. Students of the UMass Boston Art Department, as well as visiting artists, will be invited to participate in making and displaying new work in the gallery. Current is organized in collaboration with the artists, Kate Ostreicher, and Sam Toabe.

Kenji Nakayama (b. 1979. Hokkaido, Japan) is a mechanical engineer by education, and in 2004 moved to Boston to pursue an art practice and study traditional sign painting at the Butera School of Art in Boston. Nakayama’s work has been exhibited widely across the US and abroad in numerous solo and group exhibitions.

Pat Falco (b. 1987. Boston, MA) is an artist and organizer from Boston, Massachusetts. He received his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His most recent work includes public interventions and installations at Faneuil Hall and Fort Warren on George’s Island in the Boston Harbor. He is the recent recipient of the Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation and a Fund for the Arts Grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts.