Andrew D. McClees in Conversation with Jack Nichols: Rebirth BFA Thesis show, Queerness, Art History, and Future Plans

Andrew D. McClees (ADM): Hi Jack, for those that aren't familiar with you or your work, can you please describe it?

Jack Nichols (JN): Hey!!!! So for my current thesis, I’m drawing inspirations from fourteenth and fifteenth century artworks, investigating the homoerotic gaze and the intersections of queerness and sexuality in the divine image all through film photography and chromogenic printing processes. 

ADM : How many images are making it into the final show? Do they follow a series, or is it a non linear collection?

JN: So, the exhibit will contain 7 images. They’re totally part of a body of work. Each is from a different painting, but they are all part of a series. Some of the images are series of three or four, but the show only contains one photograph from each series. For example, the Birth series is a collection of three images, but for the thesis show, I only decided upon using one image. Does that make sense? 

ADM: It does! You mentioned doing the series entirely on Chromogenic Print. Is there any specific significance to that? Also, what was the shooting and planning process like? You make reference to 14th and 15th century paintings, can you speak on those, and what compelled you to comment on them?

JN: Oh my God, yea, totally! So in the beginning of the school year, I was considering doing a show around technology and identity and curating a body of work from other artists, but that was difficult to find people doing that who weren’t FAMOUS, you know? So, I decided upon doing my own show of my own work. Also at that time, I was finding it difficult feeling comfortable in the film process in such a technologically driven age. I was reading Anton Vidokle’s Art Without Death: Conversations on Russian Cosmism and throughout the interviews, he mentions the resurgence of old processes in relation to creating new processes and whether or not there should be a coexisting environment and I found that phenomenal. I was beginning to feel really comfortable doing a really old, outdated, and non taught process. Film also is such an incredibly intimate process compared to other forms of visual creation and this intimacy too was something I was really looking forward to outside of my art life (in my personal life). The shooting was something intimate, too. I’m literally the only person in the room, whether it’s in the lighting studio, my bedroom, or my dining room. Self portraiture is something super intimate and self explorative. So, posing, holding the shutter release, advancing the film, processing, and printing are all of the same. 

So, I was brought up very agnostic, but I identify as very atheist, but with my dad having an art background and my mother’s obsession with religious imagery, the decision to recreate these images was something out of pure interest. Also, simultaneously, the museum I’m a security guard at (Contemporary Arts Center) was hosting the first, large retrospective of Robert Colescott who had a period of his life, where he was recreating all of these old paintings and replacing them with black figures. I wanted to examine my queer identity and recontexualize these figures with my queer body. Also, if you look into all of these old paintings, They are GAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. There’s so much hidden homoerotic imagery in these paintings, so making them outright queer and gay was something I was interesting in exploring. 

ADM: So, what are the key images to understanding your project, or the entry points into it? And why those images?

JN: I definitely am not trying to make my images explicitly easy to understand, so with that, I want the people who know their art history to view my art, that’s my audience. But a strong gay/LGBTAI+ dialouge is something I’m also considering in my art. If we look at my Mother photograph, I think I chose the first to be a part of the show. It shows my dead corpse laid across my bed. It refers back to the famous Pieta mother done first by Michaelangelo then my many other artists, such as Berlinde de Bruyckère and Kathë Kollwitz. But it also refers to Felix González-Torres’ and his billboard series, in which he photographs impressions of figures on empty beds. The photographs refer to the thousands upon thousands of deaths during the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s and ‘90’s and that’s something I was totally thinking about. The bed is such an important element to my history and experience of growing up gay, that this photography/series was really important in investigating. That’s also seen throughout other photographs, but I digress. 

ADM: In the beginning of the interview you noted that many of the 14th and 15th century paintings being "Gay," but perhaps not hyperexplicitly so. What does the explicitness mean to you, in this context? Also more largely what are the theory implications for you of reclaiming the queerness of the images through a modern queer photographic and printing lens?

JN: So, if we look at a lot of paintings, especially the ones of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, they’re explicitly embacing each other and it can be read to be quite gay, even though that wasn’t the original implications of them doing that. They were the two saints who would walk around and spread the word of God. However,  if we look at much of the depictions of the murdering of Saint Sebastian, there is such a heavy dialogue around the eroticism and romanticism of his death. He’s often seen tied onto a column with multiple arrows shot throughout his body, he’s literally in the act of dying. If we look at his face in comparison to his body, he’s almost embracing it; in love with the pain. This masochistic embrace of pain is something that is deeply rooted throughout much of Renaissance art, but is heavily adopted in much of gay artworks. Robert Mapplethorpe, Tom of Finland, Keith Haring are all these gay artists who did this. This eroticism of pain and death was really quite drawing to me. So again, like the Mother series, my I am Saint series contained both this art historical context, as well as this gay historical context. In artworks that were commisioned heavily to a religion that was pretty homophobic, this reclaiming of these gay/queer dialouges were super important to me. Unlike the artists of those times (who were majority gay) I am able to come out and explicitly own my identity and these dialogues. I’m a bit confused on the “theory implications” of reclaiming queerness. Could you elaborate or did I already answer it? 

ADM: What I’m trying to get at is how does this work fit into the greater queer art context or conversation, currently, in the post modern world?

JN: I think my art totally has a difficult time fitting into the “postmodern” world, you know? But, if we look into the definition of “post-modern,” there’s a lot of discussion around truth and that there is no “Truth” anymore. Photography has such a strong relationship to truth, especially in terms of Barthes and many other theorists. To me, my art fits into the post-modern age simply for my investigations around truth of these 14th and 15th century artworks and discovering the many hidden homoerotic dialogues. This “insertion” of queerness into these works and my works does that, as well. Even though my process isn’t revolutionary or groundbreaking, it still holds this investigation and dialogue around “Truth.” 

ADM: This is definitely a complete body of work, and definitely one that benefits from viewing and thinking about it by one’s self. So what’s next for you? Will you continue to explore themes of religion and queerness, or do you think you’ll pivot into a wholly different set of themes for your next body of work? Will you continue to do Chromogenic prints, or will you explore new (to you) processes?

JN: So, this is something I’ve been debating a lot recently. I’m going to the Pratt Institute for my MFA in photography this fall. I love darkroom and everything you get in a darkroom print versus a digital print, but recently I’ve started doing these really interesting photographs of myself rendered through this 3D modeling application on my phone. I’m exploring these issues and ideas surrounding subjectivity in the digital age and some of the photographs are art historical reinditions. So, I think the investigations of queerness and subjectivity will just be translated into digital rather than dialogue, but I don’t know. I love film so much, but this app is so fun, lol. It’s the first time I’m hardcore debating a complete aesthetic shift, you know? 

ADM: Admittedly, I’m not super familiar? My biggest push/pull has been committing to just color or black and white, so that’s relatively speaking, small potatoes, compared to working in digital, about digital representation.  That makes a lot of sense though - digital is definitely where a lot of the more interesting statements are being made these days - what or who are your biggest influences in that realm, and do you think some of that digital work, perhaps not even photographic, looped around to fuel your analog based portfolio?

JN: I know!!! It’s such a weird thing for me. I’ve been doing darkroom for four years now and I know almost everything there is and I know barely anything about digital processes. OH 100% Matthew Stone, Björk, Arca, and Kim Gordon have been such huge inspirations in the way I discuss beauty, love, intimacy, and their body. They all work digitally, so for me to translate that has been really fun and interesting. I love that I can do that. The more and more I think about it, I really want to stick to film, but there’s that tiny little voice in the back of my head that says, do itttttttttt go digital. It’ll be fun to see what happens in New York. It’s a totally different art scene. 

ADM: Purely out of curiosity (and it is definitely tangentially related) - are you familiar with Ada Lovelace?

JN: The Writer? 

ADM: The mother of computing. Probably also a writer, but I mainly know her from an engineering standpoint. Way back in the 1800’s she contributed to the first computers, or like pre-computer tech and understanding of computational systems. Actually up until, I’m not 100% sure when, women used to be fairly common in tech. But at any rate I feel like you’d get a lot out material or inspiration out of her life. Also in a stroke of irony, I believe she was Lord Byron’s daughter.

JN: OH wow, she’s a bad bitch!!! I love it, haha! But I literally know NOTHING about computers or tech stuff, so I feel like it would be “real” enough for me to start making digital work, haha. 

There’s a lot of fashion photographers and commercial photographers shooting film, but I don’t know a lot of FAMOUS contemporary artists who are shooting film. So I think sticking to film and being in NYC, maybe I could be the leading artist reintroducing film to this post-modern/ post-internet era. Translating issues and ideas from post-internet artists is pretty post-internet if you ask me. 

ADM: Post-Post-Internet, if you’ll allow me the dad joke?

JN: Hahahahahaha! Post-analouge-post-modern-post-internet-post-post-internet lol

ADM: I’m dead. Anyway, what got me thinking of Ada Lovelace was that one could probably reinterpret old processes or past thoughts in a digital arena. Sidestepping that - will you put together a book or zine, or just a summary document before you leave for new york? Or would you ever consider working in a book format?

JN: In Cincinnati, the zine/book scene here is definitely a completely different scene than what I’m used to, so I don’t think I would here, but NYC is such a large scene that I would love to and try exploring. 

ADM: What’s your advice on, or  what did you learn, exploring and reclaiming older paintings - and what advice would you give on creating a tight set of images for a print exhibition?

JN: I learned a lot about how history affects the present. When I first started taking photographs, I was just copying, but throughout more investigations, essays, and conversations, I really got into these hidden meanings and dialogues. They’re super important in who we are and how we express our identities. 

ADM: Where can people see the final show, now that covid-19 has shut down basically everything? Also where can they see the rest of your work? - Thanks for doing the interview

JN: Oh God, these seniors are PISSED. One of the professors will be taking shots of the show and post them on the Art Academy’s website, but I will also be uploading them on my instagram/website. @holyunrest._ and jacknichols.net

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