Distillations is a selection of works by Nancy Goldring, a founding director and member of SITE. The solo exhibition is comprised of drawings, models, and photographs.

Nancy Goldring’s interdisciplinary practice spans mediums of drawing, photography, and projection, exploring themes of memory, place, and the layers of human experience. In her new exhibition, Goldring’s work continues to reveal the connections between geography, perception, and personal history. The exhibition brings together a diverse body of work, each piece an invitation into the artist’s world of shifting landscapes and fractured memories. Goldring’s approach to art-making is driven by an impulse to capture the elusive and the infinite—the fluid relationship between the present moment and the historical or emotional contexts that shape our understanding of place.

Goldring begins with a sense of place that is personal yet universal. Through intricate drawings and evocative photographic projections, she explores how memory and geography intertwine, shifting our perceptions of both the natural and constructed worlds. Her creative process follows a careful calibration of materials and techniques, allowing each medium to reveal its own unique narrative. Whether through the precise rendering of architectural details or the ephemeral beauty of the shifting sky, Goldring’s work continually challenges the boundaries between representation and abstraction, revealing the tension between what is seen and what is felt.

Goldring’s method is defined by a sensitivity to the act of looking, where the passage of time and the shifts in environment become integral to her compositions. In her series Sea Saw, the artist reflects on a summer spent perched high above the sea in Puglia, where the horizon itself becomes a meditative and transformative element. This work explores how the landscape—and the act of viewing it—transcends mere observation to become an active, dynamic force in shaping memory. Similarly, in Swallows, Goldring traces the flight patterns of swallows across the Sardinian sky, bringing the natural world to life through the syncopated rhythm of their movements.

Goldring’s sensitivity to the natural world is matched by her awareness of the cultural and historical contexts that inflect her surroundings. In works such as Amavarati and Isurumuniya, she explores ancient architectural sites by re-imagining them through contemporary lenses. These works, which merge plan and elevation, serve as an act of evocation rather than reconstruction, reminding us of the enduring presence of these sites in our collective memory.

Her series Feeding Frenzy from Place Without Description takes the viewer to the remote Tibetan monasteries overlooking the Yantzee River, inviting us to experience a different relationship with nature—one that is untethered from Western perspectives and grounded in a more holistic view of space. Goldring’s careful observations of landscape, whether drawn from Italy, Sri Lanka, or Vietnam, suggest that the boundaries between the built environment and the natural world are never as fixed as we assume, but rather are always in flux.

At the heart of Goldring’s work is a process of discovery—of allowing the material qualities of each medium to dictate the course of the piece. Her use of projections and layered photography allows her to create visual palimpsests, where images from different times and places come into dialogue with one another. The result is a work that both commemorates and transcends the locations it represents, asking the viewer to engage in a constant re-imagining of what it means to be connected to a place.

Nancy Goldring: Distillations is open January 9 through February 9, 2025 at 83 Grand Street, New York.

An opening reception will be held on January 9 from 6–8PM.

Special thanks to Jingyi Gao, Thea Yuxin Lin, Gabrielle Newman, and Hsu (Archie) Chia-Ching.

Nancy Goldring is an artist whose interdisciplinary practice combines drawing, photography, and projection to explore themes of memory, travel, and history. As a co-founder of Sculpture In The Environment (SITE), she developed innovative public art projects before focusing on her solo work, which incorporates her background in art history and architecture. Goldring's work has been exhibited internationally, and her archive is held by the Smithsonian Institution. She is a professor emerita at Montclair State University and currently lives and works in New York City.

Press release available here.

Please direct all inquiries including requests for high-resolution images and a complete list of works to Clara Syme clara@a83.site or Owen Nichols owen@a83.site

Link to exhibition installation photography by Jingyi Gao.