Patrick McNabb’s exhibition ‘Aftertaste’ blurs the lines between memory and experience, immersing viewers in images that resonate deeply and provoke reflection. Opening this September, the show explores the enduring imprint of experiences on architecture and memory. The exhibition features four unique portfolios, each a singular edition released monthly leading up to the show, with the first, ‘Flesh,’ exploring body resilience and vulnerability.
We interviewed McNabb, exploring his creative process, the origins of ‘Aftertaste,’ and his approach to capturing non-sexual and social-sexual spaces. His insights deepen our understanding of his artistry and the intent behind his photographs. Throughout this article, we feature work from the four portfolios.
Artist Interview
Natural Pursuits (NP): Could you share more about the overarching theme of “Aftertaste” and what inspired you to choose this title for your body of work?
Patrick McNabb (PM): Sure, with my work, Aftertaste, my pictures seek to prove a lingering existence of how experience remains in architecture and memory. When I was thinking of potential titles for the series of pictures I recognized the hazy presence in the atmosphere being the connecting fiber through the work.
When I started processing the pictures with language, I began with the word hover and my thinking branched out from there. At first the language wasn’t prompting me to have the particular physical experience that I had used as a guide in selecting the pictures for the work.
In the pictures I’m looking for a presence, an excitation, or an awareness that I can feel in my body and was hoping for a similar response to a single word, if possible. I got to the word “aftertaste” and it immediately gave me that feeling. I became interested in the reference to another body’s presence sticking with you physically in a similar capacity to the atmospheric haze in the pictures.
Earlier in the year I wrote a little note on my studio wall* about how one another’s scent remains on our bodies once we leave each other. We leave our scent and we form a new one together, more romantically. It also gave a pleasant memory of coming out of the pandemic,** when some of the still existent gay social-sexual spaces shuttered for good.
You would retain someone’s smell so close to your nose directly, the mask as a holder, and it became an erotic extension of experiences with others. We were holding onto that experience and breathing each other in, for longer. I wanted the title to describe how experiences linger in a physical state as much as in your mind, where your memory is constantly rewriting and processing it.
* My studio wall is a chaotic jotting of words, memories or language, mine and quotes from others, that surround random hole cut outs…you never know when you’re ready to receive them and when they’ll pop up more consciously.
**I’m actually writing this interview with covid so “coming out of the pandemic” so to speak.
Exhibition and Portfolio Details
Patrick McNabb’s upcoming solo exhibition, “Aftertaste,” delves into the nuanced interplay between the physical and the remembered, casting a keen eye on how personal and collective experiences linger in spaces and bodies. The exhibition is set to debut in the fall of 2024, and in anticipation, Patrick McNabb has curated a series of four unique portfolios that progressively disclose the sub-themes of this larger body of work.
Each portfolio, created as an exclusive edition of one, contains 14 digital silver prints, sized at 11 x 14 inches (27.94 x 35.56 cm). These prints are meticulously crafted to evoke the exhibition’s central themes, with the first portfolio titled “Flesh” focusing on the tangible interplay of strength and vulnerability within human bodies and the transformative spaces they inhabit.
How to Procure a Portfolio
For those interested in owning a piece of this extraordinary collection, each portfolio will be released successively, one per month, leading up to the exhibition’s opening. Viewing and acquisition details for these portfolios are available through Pat McNabb’s dedicated gallery page at www.patrickmcnabb.com/portfolios.
For direct inquiries or to discuss the acquisition of these limited edition portfolios, please contact hi@haul.gallery.
NP: Your first portfolio, “Flesh,” focuses on the fallibility and strength of bodies. What drew you to explore these aspects of the human experience, and how did you approach capturing these themes through your photography?
PM: I am interested in the fallible/strength of bodies as qualities largely because of my experience going through the world as someone with chronic illness. It’s how I and/or my body processes the world. I recognize the ebb and flow of health and bodily abilities varying differently and by day. I am open about my experiences with this towards the people who are featured in this work; and of course they are human too so they have their own experiences with their bodies.
Most often this theme comes up organically. This body of work features going to or constructing space for physical experience as a primary feature and we spend hours photographing in otherwise stressful bodily positions. Our bodies become a vessel for exploration and tension release so its vulnerability and ability to hold transformative power is a heavy focus for me.
I don’t mean to make it sound cleaned up either, bodies are messy, the world can be violent and cruel and that’s what makes pleasure that comes from them so immensely powerful. Having a body in this world is an overwhelmingly tense reliance so any pleasure we can find is very
welcomed.
I wish it were not being said that the shame people are faced with for their bodies/pleasures from bodies – if that could be moved instead to shame for violence enacted against them – we’d have an easier place to exist.
But we do need to keep saying that, because we are seeing in real time the level of cruelty and ease of violence people are capable of – we are witnessing a genocide unfold in Palestine and our country paying for the devastation and atrocities that are occuring daily for months. It’s an incredibly scary thing to witness, and it’s over and over again. And that is done by other human beings. We are our biggest threat of existence while also being our biggest support.
NP: You’ve said in the past that your work considers community formations and spaces claimed for sexuality in urban America. Do these themes manifest in the new exhibitions? If so, what new insights might the audience gain from it?
PM: Front and center. My drive is to show the survival of these spaces or the capacity to continue to build them and how they and we can act as a pressure point against a larger culture of repression to them. Hopefully I can offer a viewpoint showing some transformative experiences possible from these spaces and through certain acts and how taking abject space into transcendence can further enrich your life directly or as a witness.
I am hoping people can find strength in how they move through the world or offer potential connections in thought or just offer another voice describing ways these spaces or their void have influenced me and others in my direct community.
NP: You’ve shot for Natural Pursuits before; how do you approach photographing in a non-sexual nudist environment like Natural Pursuits compared to the social-sexual spaces often depicted in your other works? What shifts in perspective or technique did you find necessary?
PM: The biggest difference is the limitations; Natural Pursuits is a timed event with people you are just meeting at a host place. It’s a less controlled circumstance as the photographer because the role is lessened. This can be a great thing, I am more hands off and know a lot of my ideas that stem from social-sexual spaces can be captured in the moments in-between more physical encounters.
You can still be directional at an NP event too if that’s more your style, because people are there and very willing to be photographed and may actually want guidance. I know when I have been photographed there I’m hoping to be given direction because otherwise I can be excruciatingly awkward in front of a camera. People are there at NP to be photographed, meet new people, and be seen and to validate one another. Photography can be a great tool for that.
When shooting my usual way, I vacillate between role and host because my friends are there for me and the camera. I mean they are there for many reasons and my role is never the exact same from shoot to shoot, but I set up the circumstance, so in one way or another I am responsible for the goings-on there. Another difference is I work with people consistently and long term, it’s a different experience at NP because you are meeting and learning about each other while photographing in real time.
Rarely does that happen in the other spaces I photograph – I typically work with people who have asked to be photographed and we set something up with ideas shared before going into the photoshoot. The space is selected beforehand and I identify some things I may be interested in trying in a particular shoot. NP is an event with an end so it’s more of a meeting place that could potentially develop further at a later date.
Outside of NP there is not a particular set photoshoot timed end, or it’s a bit more lenient. Shooting digitally there isn’t a particular full stopping point, batteries recharge, memory cards are formatted, and so it’s on us to call it quits and I’m working with people who are somewhat insatiable in one way or another so we usually keep going deeper and deeper.
But as photo sessions there are also similarities. I typically start out in both circumstances very voyeuristic and respond to the people and space. Then from there I start identifying interests and what I am seeing that can be focus points of the shoot. Then let go again, explore, find something and really hyper focus. etc. Moving in and out of responding to what I’m seeing in front of me and on the back of the camera; a tool to play and attempt to find something new each time.
NP: You work across various mediums, including performance, video, installation, and sculpture. How do these different forms of expression influence your approach to photography, especially in projects like “Aftertaste”?
PM: This project is actually a bit of a self-driven challenge for me to keep to photographs. No gestures or sculptural components, and limit the installation of the work. As you mentioned I typically engage with the photographs in multiple methods so this project I have set out to try to
make pictures in frames on a wall or loose in a box.
I still have faith that pictures have immense strength in their own right and I wanted to give them a fair chance to succeed on their own. And as much as I thought I was having a deep and vulnerable moment with a friend by admitting my adoration and belief in just photographs my friend was very correct in pointing out quite obviously, “you’re a photographer bitch, of course you believe that.”
Maybe photographers are the only ones who are holding out that hope…or perhaps more correctly, the only ones concerned they can’t stand on their own. The challenge for me is allowing the pictures to speak for themselves, an ever-present negotiation with what’s doing enough and what’s doing too much… I always want to go too far before pulling back, that’s the failure I’m consistently interested in finding.
NP: With “Aftertaste” set to open in September and four unique portfolios released beforehand, how do you hope this exhibition will impact viewers?
PM: The portfolios are mapping relations to the different themes in my work and identifying some motifs and a language that will then be furthered in the exhibition. Because the exhibition is a tight edit of nine photographs, I wanted a form of communication that extended this photographic world and allowed a viewer to fully enmesh within it.
I thought the answer was in book form, but for many reasons it did not seem possible (at least not yet, no idea is fully in the garbage bin). I was much more excited by this idea of a single portfolio where each four
portfolios are only printed once, a specific custom box for each. The distillation of the pictures to a small amount relative to its total allowed me to focus on specific ideas that went together.
Each set could further complement each other and be its own complete form. They become their own bodies where each photograph is kind of an atom building into an organism and they can only operate with those 14 parts/pictures together. All the pictures in the portfolios have yet
to be editioned and can only be found in these forms. That is until the last one – it comes out with the show and it will consist of an extended edit of the pictures in the exhibition.
I’m hoping the exhibition will fester in memory and form its own beautiful stink (metaphorically, I promise not to douse the space with vinegar (yes i did have something like that up my sleeve embarrassingly)) and it will gnaw at viewers and myself to want more…creatively, excitedly, curiously, however…
About the Artist
Pat McNabb (b.1988) is an artist primarily working with photography as well as performance, video, installation, and sculpture. Pat’s work considers community formations and spaces claimed for sexuality in urban America, medicalization of sexuality and its relations to fetishism, and illness as a measure to time. Pat received an MFA from School of Visual Arts in 2016 and a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2014. Exhibitions include Williams College Museum of Art, Old Pfizer Factory in New York City, Soho Photography Gallery, New York and Denker+Schneider gallery, Berlin. Pat has curated a number of group exhibitions for Re: Art Show in Brooklyn. Pat’s work has been published in AQNB, Musee Magazine, Primal Sight, and Newspaper among others. In 2020, Pat was invited to be the inaugural artist in residence at Tiny Birch Residency and in 2019 attended the Vermont Studio Center residency and was the recipient of an Artist Grant. Pat is represented by haul gallery in New York.
Website: www.patrickmcnabb.com
Instagram: @pat_mnb
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