“Chemical Apparitions”
“Chemical Apparitions” delves into the uncanny, examining the elusive space where memory and hallucination intersect. Using experimental and historical photographic processes, Wilkinson creates artifacts of fabricated memories, visitations, and chemical traces. Through an auto-ethnographic approach, this exhibitions pulls from his experiences with brain injuries and pharmaceutical psychosis to reexamine our relationship to photography as artifacts, as products of intuition, and how memory is constructed.
Found objects, like photographs, strike Wilkinson’s psyche – stumbling upon them like a thought piercing the threshold of awareness. The found object, natural or man-made, carries histories and energies imbued before (re)discovery. These materials speak without immediate explanation; they appear and pique curiosity like apparitions. Photographic light sensitive material has a silver body and psyche; images emerge from a blank surface through chemical reactions as if they were bubbling up from the unconscious.
Nathan Allen Wilkinson (b. 1999 in Peoria, AZ) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Lafayette, IN. He is a third year MFA Studio Art Graduate candidate and Instructor of Record at Purdue University, and received his BFA in Studio Art from Western Washington University in 2022. Wilkinson’s artistic practice encompasses experimental and historical photographic processes, sculpture, woodworking, sound, and installation. He is recognized for his chemical manipulation of silver gelatin prints, wet plate collodion photographs, and uncanny imagery. Wilkinson’s artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally since 2016, notably at Ohio University’s “Alternative 2025,” the Photographer’s Eye, A Smith Gallery, SE Center for Photography, Millepiani Coworking (Rome, Italy), Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis University Kokomo Art Gallery, FAR Center for Contemporary Art, and the Western Gallery. His work has been acknowledged through awards, scholarships, publications, and competitive juror positions.
To Learn More About the Artist and His Work:
Instagram : @naw.studioart
