by Nick Mass
Exhibition Statement:
Under Observation is a portrait series built from isolated segments of the face, photographed on Polaroid Integral film with the Macro 5 SLR. Originally designed for forensic and medical documentation, the Macro 5 SLR offers five fixed close-focus lenses and two powerful flashes on the right and left, allowing extreme precision and intimacy in capturing details of the face. By photographing individual features at varying levels of magnification, the scale and perspective of the faces shift from frame to frame. The resulting composite—assembled using the Polaroid borders as a structural grid—creates a portrait that resists a singular, fixed viewpoint.
The subjects are fellow artists, whose identities shift constantly. Their presence and expression change rapidly moment to moment, influenced by internal swings, the pressure of public perception, and the ongoing negotiation between honesty in their work and the need not to give all of themselves to the people. The tension between anxiety and calm, exposure and acceptance, combined with the tension between artist persona and true self produces disjointedness, with each frame capturing a distinct instant of that multiplicity.
Some portraits within the series appear more structured, their pieces aligning with a certain order and stability, while others are more fractured and cubist. This mirrors daily shifts in personal balance. Certain portraits incorporate subtle nods to the subject’s creative practice—through objects, symbols, or colors tied to their work—while others strip these
references away entirely, reflecting the concept of who they are without their work.
By using instant film in a modular, nontraditional way, the series pushes at the medium’s limits while honoring its tactile, analog nature. Each Polaroid is both a self-contained image and part of a larger whole, its surface carrying unrepeatable marks of time and chemistry. The Macro 5 produces a consistent spread failure of such chemistry along the top due to uneven roller pressure when adapted to use modern Integral Film, which I have opted to not fine-tune to emphasize self-perceived shortfalls by revealing the photo negative. On the positive, defects reveal as much as the images themselves, holding space for imperfection, transformation, and development that define both the artists and the medium.
Artist Statement:
My work spans across sculptural painting, collage, instant film photography, experimental hiphop, and curatorial projects. Each medium carries residue from the last: paint scraps shift into collage, collage methods shape my performance wearables, and performance influences
my run and gun photographic technique. Improv instincts from earlier comedy work drive the flow-state logic connecting the practice. I evolve by sampling previous forms of myself and redirecting them into new ones.
My themes stay consistent. I examine relationships, community, emotional honesty, depressive tendencies, environmental and societal dread, and the small moments that structure a life. Reused materials, saturated colors, floral imagery, and fragmented forms become ways to think about growth under pressure and how people find beauty in chaos, navigate intimacy, and adapt through connection.
My work ranges from inch-scale photographs to body-scale wooden constructions built from oriented strand board, cardboard, fabric, thrifted objects, and remnants of earlier projects. Controlled chaos and strong use of motion guides my compositions. I archive materials and let
that archive set direction. Most pieces are completed in one sitting to preserve immediacy. My music follows the same logic. Distortion, chopping, vocal sampling, and beat manipulation parallel my use of material reuse and reassembly. Performance energy matches the raw
intensity of my visual work, and wearables and video direction link the sonic and visual worlds. Curation shapes how I collaborate. It teaches me to identify strengths in others and merge them with my own, letting community influence the work. My intent is to document how individuals live, connect, and isolate. I make work for myself and for the everyday person, shifting between the extremes of clarity and withholding, and creating works that hold beauty, honesty, and occasional dread.