Sean Nash

Acid Base is Sean Nash’s first solo exhibition at Kate Werble Gallery and his debut solo show in New York City.

Nash's new paintings in Acid Base depict a group of imagined flora, fauna and marine life; an installation of imaginary botanicals and submarine plants running in a line around the gallery. These 9 paintings and single small sculpture are drawn from Nash’s many years experimenting with growth and decay, specifically his studies of fermentation and the microbial. His improvised biological abstractions are made through painterly spills, calligraphic strokes, and applications of paint using squeegees, stencils, and hand-modified tools.

The paintings in Acid Base are alive with Nash's imagining of trans*ecologies, illustrated through fluid and changing forms and textures in the work. He uses an acrylic color palette based on the colors in a litmus test (pH) spectrum. Litmus tests, conducted on paper made with extracted lichen dyes, measure the pH of a liquid from acid to base. This range of off-white, pink, green, red and tones in his paintings are also found within more historical botanical drawings and these colors help fuse the literal and metaphorical earth environs. Using this naturally derived palatte, Nash gives us a rubric for engaging with the invisible, the lesser-seen and the microscopic.

For Nash, the colliding and hybrid forms in his biomorphic abstractions relate to human experience. In them he asks: "how do we/I imagine the bubbling chemical soup and the emergent origins of life? Where do we begin and end? What ferments in the margins?"

Sean Nash is a visual artist based in Kansas City, Kansas, whose work spans painting, sculpture, and writing. He investigates dynamic and changing ecosystems and often references his experiences with fermentation, cooking, gardening, and the natural world. Nash received his MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University and a BFA from UT Knoxville. He has held solo shows at the Volland Foundation in Alma, KS, The Kniznick Gallery in Waltham, MA, Plug Projects in Kansas City, MO, and Black Ball Projects in Brooklyn, NY. Most recently, his work was shown in a solo show at TOPS gallery in Memphis, TN (2025)and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, KS, in conjunction with the Charlotte Street Fellows Award (2023).