An innovative artist who has studied both fine arts and philosophy, Eric Nado makes art that is at once strikingly beautiful and accessibly conceptual. Since 1999, Nado has been transforming industrial objects and “urban remains” into meticulously constructed contemporary sculptures. Obsessed with a collective past, his work is infused with nostalgia but keeps an eye firmly on the modern. He was a founding cohort of Lézarts, the first visual arts housing cooperative in Montreal, Quebec. Currently living and working in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Nado is represented in Montreal by the COA Gallery and in California at the Laguna Gallery of Contemporary Arts.
Nato’s Typewriter Guns series epitomizes the artist’s oeuvre of dismantling and reorganizing existing objects to reveal unseen possibilities that are suggested by their original forms or functions. Created from vintage mechanical typewriters, these incredible sculptures come in a range of vibrant colors and provocative designs. Nato uses a variety of tools to disassemble, cut, bend, and otherwise alter a range of classic writing machines and their component parts. What emerges is a spectrum of sculptures that take the distinct form of automatic rifles while simultaneously retaining their key characteristics as typewriters.
Setting aside the various meanings and profound implications that this work might suggest (is the pen mightier than the sword?), these are simply amazing objects to look at. With titles borrowed from their source materials, Typewriter Gun sculptures such as Black Remington and Orange Underwood 130 have already sold for thousands of dollars.