Nick Primo

About the Artist

Nick Primo (b. New Britain, CT 1982) earned an MFA from Rinehart School of Sculpture at MICA (2014), and BS in Art Education from Central CT State University (2006). After serving as a public school art educator for half a decade, he relocated to Baltimore, MD to enroll at MICA with the aim of receiving the aforementioned degree. In addition to being an artist and freelance furniture maker, he currently works as an Exhibits Specialist for Smithsonian American Art Museum. His work has been featured in a number of group and solo exhibitions in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC.    

Artist's Statement

Utilizing the building processes and visual language of architecture, object and furniture design, I create sculptures, prints and drawings that investigate the intersectionality of these constructs with time, transition, intimate and public space. Playful and deliberately ambiguous, but not ambivalent, my artworks are reflective metaphors on living in a consumer dominated nation saturated with information and objects, where narrative, truth, and memory are all suspect. Living in Baltimore and working in Washington DC allows me a perspective into two very different urban, social and political environments that inform my artistic process. These two cities are spaces I live in and respond to, and the daily physical, emotional, and mental transition from one place to the other, guides my aesthetic decision making. The look and feel of their architecture, products, people, and the refuse collectively produced by them serve to inform my palette of form, texture, color, and content. Historically, I continue in a aesthetic tradition of simplistic form typified by Richard Serra, David Smith, or Sol LeWitt, but have a greater fascination in material experimentation as in the work of Eva Hesse. Reflective of my work experience and training as a professional fabricator, I choose forms and building materials that reflect current industry standards through their prefabricated appearance, color intensity, accessibility to average consumers, and their place in the world once their utility is exhausted. As a result, I’m interested in building upon contemporary visual narratives created by working artists such as Thea Djordjadze and Valerie Kolakis.