Manufractured: New Works By Nicholas Stahl
10/25/24-11/22/24
Opposites are not exclusively at odds with one another but intertwined in a spectrum. Manufractured is a show about learning to find acceptance in the space between dualities.
Nicholas Stahl is a graphic designer and art director living and working in Lawrence, KS. After architecture school, Nicholas focused his energy into music. Beginning here in Lawrence and eventually touring cities all over the country, Nicholas fell in love with the dedication, ingenuity and community on display in small but thriving DIY scenes. Nicholas sought ways to be more engaged in the music community, eventually reconfiguring his design experience into a medium more directly applicable to the needs of those around him - graphic design. The growing accessibility of design programs alongside experimentation with physical print and fabrication processes allowed Nicholas to combine a DIY approach with professional presentation tools. Each project is a dance between imagination and constraint, an opportunity to uplift the product beyond its material relegation - a rebellion both within and against prescribed structures.
Having carved his own non-traditional path into an artistic medium, Nicholas finds potential in the overlooked and discarded. Those stripped of their utility and labeled as useless are not solely defined by their intended use case. Manufractured attempts to imagine new futures by deconstructing the perception of the abandoned while in conflict with inescapable realities.
To thoughtfully and unashamedly “rip-off” Gary Painter’s everrelevant 1979 Rozz Tox Manifesto, cite: ITEM 9
“Capitalism good or ill is the river in which we sink or swim. Inspiration has always been born of recombination.”