Part critique, part fascination, Nathan Meltz’s art examines the infiltration of technology into every facet of our lives, from family and food to politics and war. Using printmaking, animation, sculpture, and performance, Meltz’s nightmarish industrial creations are set against images of grand mechanical constructions, an off-kilter vision of technology.
“In my visual vocabulary, the contemporary world of nanotechnology and genetic modification is retrofitted with collaged analog machine parts,” writes Meltz. “Collages of mechanical humanoids and animals turn into printmaking, animation, and sculpture, as I create visual narratives telling the story of a doomed robotic populace in a techno-dystopia.”
Founder and curator of the Screenprint Biennial, Meltz is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of the Arts at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.
His solo exhibitions include the gallery at Atelier Presse Papier, Trois-Rivières, Canada; the Shircliff Gallery at Vincennes University, Indiana; Southern Illinois University’s Vergette Gallery; GRIDSPACE (NYC); the University of Florida – Jacksonville’s Andrew Brest Gallery; and Noise Gallery (OH). His international exhibitions include the International Print Center New York, the 16th International Printmaking Triennial Graphica Creativa Triennial, Jyväskylä Art Museum, Finland, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio De Janiero, Brazil, and more.
Meltz’s art has been featured in publications including Art in Print, Printeresting, and the Mid America Print Council Journal. His series “Strangling the Fascist Viper” has received juror awards from the Louisiana International Printmaking Exhibition and the Political Impressions exhibition at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Printworks Award from Artists Image Resource, Pittsburgh PA, and the Prix de Print award from Art in Print magazine.
Meltz’s current body of work investigates technology’s role in utopian movements. One branch of research involves fantastical narratives of animals, plants, and fungi seeking to escape earth for a more sustainable climate. The other involves representations of the mythical Jewish Golem, the original automaton summoned by magic to protect against oppression. Both branches, situated in large format and experimental printmaking, seek to address whether our technologies have made for better worlds, or worse.
His current work has been included an article published in the California Society of Printmakers Journal and exhibited in many venues, including the Four Rivers Printmaking Biennial, where Meltz was awarded an honorable mention award, and the Trois-Rivières International Printmaking Biennial, Canada, where he was given the Prix de Presse Papier award.
