Nina Tichava - Same As It Ever Was

The title of this exhibition is not to be mistaken for the experience. At her premier solo with K Contemporary, Nina Tichava will be exploring more than 50 new ways to see the world. “Same As It Ever Was” will showcase this acclaimed Santa Fe mixed media artist at her groundbreaking best.

Tichava will be exhibiting paintings from three of her major series: Lanterns, Botanicals and Weavings, as well as numerous studies and works on paper. In laying out the scope of her artistic practice, Tichava is offering the viewer an abbreviated survey of her work, with individual series informing the whole, building upon each other literally and conceptually.

“The freedom to share this breadth of interest, accumulated over time, and the invitation to be multidimensional is one I don’t take for granted,” Tichava shares.

Nina Tichava’s work has always been known for its intricate and painstakingly layered pattern. Nina views pattern as an infinitely flexible tool. “As a template, it serves to produce order out of apparent chaos. The same tool can also be applied over the most organized systems, spawning endless variations and novel hybrids.”

As a painter with a background in textiles and printmaking, Tichava is drawn to pattern. Observing the details of her environment, her intuitive and automatic response is to translate them into some kind of order that is recognizable, perhaps digestible.

Regardless of the scale of this artist’s focus, she takes in everything. Then, employing an intricate and personal set of rules within her paintings, imposes order onto organic elements while rendering more organic, those elements that are man-made.

“In a way, I'm reframing the world around me into a format that supports my sensibilities while allowing me to explore the dualities I perceive in patterns: precise and imperfect, hectic and ordered, aggressive and delicate.”

Guests to “Same as it Ever Was” will get to know Nina Tichava as the builder and the artist, while also getting a glimpse into the beauty that cradled Tichava’s creative evolution. Many of her bold works are built upon foundations of straight lines and precise symmetries, however, winding among those structural elements, the viewer will also notice lightly flowing botanical embroideries, relaxed and reassuring. And, beneath this order and spontaneity, rests a unique and versatile stratum--thousands of hand-painted beads forming a grid that is distinctively Tichava. This pattern building presents a singularly three-dimensional aspect. Left to speak for themselves, the beads create an impression of irresistible depth.

“I call it pattern-based abstraction,” she explains. “It’s the relationship between the small and the large, the micro and the macro. I’m interested in engaging people in a conversation about how one leads to the other, how the individual helps fill out the whole.”

Nina Tichava was raised in both rural northern New Mexico and the Bay Area in California. She was influenced by her father, a construction worker and mathematician —and by her mother, who is an artist and designer. The reflections of these dualities—country to city, pragmatist to artist, nature to technology—are essential to and evident in her paintings.

Nina Tichava is the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award Grant in 2007 and has exhibited professionally since 2009. Tichava’s work is featured in numerous private, corporate and public collections including: Delta Airlines, Seattle WA, City of Seattle Permanent Collection, Seattle WA, Fenwick and West LLP, Silicon Valley CA, Harcos-Huneke Collection, Miramonte CA, Swedish Hospital, Seattle WA, University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle WA, Seattle City Light Public Utility Collection, Seattle WA, Jewish Community Center and Foundation, Denver CO. She received her BFA from California College of the Arts [+ Crafts] in San Francisco/Oakland and has exhibited in all major national art fairs including: Miami, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Dallas, New York, Aspen, Seattle and San Francisco.