Nicolas Shake’s practice is rooted in an observational approach to his surroundings, capturing fragments of urban life with an acute sensitivity to light, atmosphere, and time. Best known for his subleached dye on canvas works created by leaving canvases in the sun and letting the sun and weather impact the surface for months on end, he also works in photography, documenting the shifting landscape of Los Angeles through images of building facades, billboards, and signage—ephemeral markers of the city’s visual identity. These instant photographs, with their distinctive color shifts and physical imperfections, create an archive of urban transience, emphasizing the tension between permanence and obsolescence.

Shake explores light as both a destructive and sublime force. Inspired by the sun-bleached effects of recovered desert materials, he treats the landscape as an open-air darkroom, developing stenciled images upon dyed canvases exposed to the elements. Across media, his work is unified by an interest in visual memory and the ways in which landscapes—both physical and cultural—are in constant flux. Shake mobilizes utopian images from a more hopeful period of American mass culture, investigating where their promise was derailed. Artistically, he navigates the tensions of Minimalism, Abstraction, and Conceptualism, all with an essentially Californian air.

Nicolas Shake (b. 1981, Northridge, CA) lives and works between Los Angeles and Pearblossom, CA. He received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008, and his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2011. Shake was an artist in residence at the Chinati Foundation in 2019. Recent group exhibitions include: Asymmetrical Orbits, University of La Verne Harris Gallery, La Verne, CA; Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Galeria Mascota, Mexico City; Iʼll Be Your Mirror, Brant-Timonier, Palm Beach, FL.