“Shadows in the Sun” is a collection of materials, objects, films, and actions that squints at over thirteen years of collaboration and dialogue between Nathaniel Hendrickson and Douglas Lucas. This body of work emerges from their shared methodologies—games, chance operations, unconscious projections, cut-up techniques, dreamwork, improvisation, and divination—that prioritize intuition and surrender over control. Their collective creations utilize unpredictability and the agency of materials, objects, and environments–emphasizing relationality, spontaneity, and an openness to the unknown. Through this methodology, they aim to adopt a posture of humility, receptivity, and improvisation that resists the hubris of absolute control and instead values co-creation with the world’s unpredictable forces.
Guided by principles of object-oriented ontology, Hendrickson and Lucas view objects and materials as vibrant entities, not mere extensions of human intent but collaborators in an ontological dance of cosmic play and ever-unfolding process. These elements possess their own trajectories and resonances, challenging traditional hierarchies between artist, viewer, and object. “Shadows in the Sun” resists the reductive impulse to explain or decode. Instead, it invites audiences to engage with the work on a sensory and experiential level, privileging presence and immediacy over intellectualization. This collection explores the blurred boundaries between self and world, human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate. Through their works, Hendrickson and Lucas aim to re-enchant the everyday, inviting viewers into a liminal space where perception softens and the world’s inherent vibrancy comes alive. “Shadows in the Sun” is not a statement but an encounter—a call to dwell in wonder, to listen, and to sense.
The center of the exhibition features a panoramic image of a creek bed printed on matte paper flows down a wall and into the exhibition floor. This piece is met by a steel conduit with the sound of creek water subtly reverberating inside. Parallel with this installation is a video piece of a silent 16mm black and white film called Elemental is displayed on a tv screen and mounted on saw horses with a fine linen cloth draped over it and coal arranged on top. The installation squints at the dark histories of mineral extraction in Kentucky and the role of early film and consumer technologies in the trajectories of global meltdown.
For me, my affinity with object-oriented ontology didn’t come from the typical origins. I arrived at it through vital materialism, Bergson, and new environmentalism. The core of this philosophy is that objects have their own agency—the world, in all its things, is full of vitality. Objects are not passive; they act upon us as much as we act upon them.
This framework helped us foreground materiality and sensuality rather than a linear narrative. We were drawn to the beauty and strangeness of materials, much like how you might pick up an interesting stone on a walk. That tactile interaction carries a connection to deep time—something ancient held within the composition of an object. There’s a kind of horizontal relationship between all objects, humans included, within the cosmos.
That’s why we chose to leave that specific term in the show. It represents a broad network of ideas rather than one strict theoretical framework.