Dirty Legacy : Navin Norling

Notorious public figures, artifacts of commercial advertising, heterogeneous fragments of cultural idioms, and proprietary nomenclatures serve as pivotal points of departure for Navin Norling’s work. Spanning from 2004 to 2023, paintings, sculptural objects, and installations emblematic of Norling's practice compose the artist’s first solo exhibition with Johnson Lowe Gallery, Dirty Legacy.

Norling’s early adolescent experiences in suburban California, from his explorations across the Bay Area to summers spent on his grandfather’s farm, continue to inform his decades-long practice of mining social detritus. His loyalty to urban grit, pop culture-isms, and the art of the streets — developed during his studies under the esteemed artist Raymond Saunders in California and further intensified through his subsequent entry into the New York art scene — intertwines with an appreciation for salvaged components. Cast-off wood and dilapidated windowpanes frequently make an appearance in the artist’s oeuvre, exhibited by works such as Good to the Last Drop (2005) presented in “Make it Now,” curated by Franklin Sirmans and Mary Cerruti at SculptureCenter in New York; Black Cats (2003), held in the contemporary art collection of the Brooklyn Museum; and Blessed (2022), previously exhibited at Anno Domini Gallery in San Jose, California.

The works presented in Norling’s Atlanta debut posit the artist’s ceaseless inquiry into the confluence of cultures, defying the constraints of homogeneity and embracing the unequivocal truths of these fusions.

Navin Norling earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts. Norling later received his Master of Fine Arts at Hunter College in New York in 2002. Norling currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia, where he is a Professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design.