Nathaniel Rackowe FRSS

Born in 1975, Cambridge, UK. Lives and works in London, UK

Nathaniel Rackowe is a London based artist from the UK. His often large-scale urban
referenced structures, and light sculptures are designed to recreate the experience of
navigating the city around us. His works are abstracted impressions of today's metropolitan experience evoked through the vicissitudes of light as it fluctuates throughout the city.

Influenced by Modernism, film and video games, Rackowe uses the mass manufactured
derivative products of the modernist era - glass, corrugated plastics, concrete, scaffolding, breeze blocks and strip lights - to recreate the collective experience and visual sensations of urban contemporary life, while incorporating a deeply personal emotional response to flowing through built space.

Rackowe uses light to structure space by emulating the way it delineates buildings,
city blocks and streets. In this way Rackowe departs from the aesthetics of the use of light of American minimalists such as Flavin and Judd. By decoding these experiences his works capture the chromatic sensations of desolate streets at dawn, the atmosphere as daylight fades into night and the shadows created by obtrusive cranes, scaffolding and skeletal buildings. The resulting sculptures - striking geometric shapes and dramatic shafts of light - combine vivid beauty with the grimness of industrialisation, perhaps offering a true representation of the disparities of contemporary life.

Rackowe’s art practice spans public art, installation, sculpture, photography and
painting, and in the last 5 years an increasing focus on performance, collaborating with choreographer Angela Woodhouse.

In 2022 Nathaniel Rackowe created a major commission for Saint Laurent, encompassing 11 cites and 7 counties world wide. He presented an ambitious light installation encompassing a tree as part of Licht­fes­ti­val Gent 2021, a Light Art Festival in Ghent, Belgium, and also a solo show of newly developed works at FOLD Gallery, London. 

2019 saw Nathaniel Rackowe present a solo outdoor installation and accompanying performances in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, the cities gallery district, alongside additional performances presented in Oslo at the Opera House, and in London at the Royal Society of Sculptors.
 

2018’s solo shows included exhibitions at Letitia Gallery, Beirut in addition to installing a large permanent public sculpture in Aarhus, Denmark in collaboration with KWY Studio, along with presenting a dance / installation collaboration in the National Museum of Serbia, Belgrade.
 

Other recent solo shows have taken place at Jerome Pauchant, Paris, and Fold Gallery,
London, along with participating in the prestigious Sculpture in the City, in London. A major solo exhibition at One Canada Square in Canary Wharf in January 2016, was followed by exhibiting his large scale sculpture, Black Shed Expanded, at Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art in London. Platonic Spin an outdoor temporary public sculpture, was part of Lumiere London in January 2016.

Public Art Projects include Square Prism, The Royal Society of Sculptors, London (2018),
LP46, Downtown Beirut (2018), Black Shed Expanded, Village Royal, Paris (2014), Black
Cube, DEN FRIE Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2013), Spin, Lima Peru (2010)
RP3, Economist Plaza with the Contemporary Arts Society, London (2007) and LP4, Victoria Station, London (2006).

His works are in notable public collections including VR d'Affaux Collection, Paris; Hussam Otaibi, Modern Forms collection, and sculpture park, UK; Vente Privée, Paris; CIFO (Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation), Miami, USA; Jumex Collection, Mexico; Museum of Modern Art, Lima, Peru; LVMH Collection, Paris, France; Museum of New Art, Tasmania, Australia; David Roberts Collection, London, UK; UK Government Art Collection, London, UK; Hauser & Wirth Collection, Zurich, Switzerland; and Ernst & Young Collection, London, UK.