PASC Exhibition Opening: “Masterpiece”
Masterpiece/..., Lewis Foster & Nick Granch, is a 2-person exhibition featuring PASC artists Lewis Foster and Nicholas “Nick” Granch. This is the first comprehensive exhibition featuring a large selection of both artists' artworks spanning the past three years. This exhibition highlights their distinct visual languages, presenting two strong and individual artistic practices in dialogue. The title for this exhibition comes from Lewis Foster's description for his artwork, masterpiece, with Nick Granch's more restrained ... or ellipses implying a title that is also an intentional omission on Nick's part.
Lewis Foster is a Detroit-based artist working out of the PASC Detroit studio. Lewis’ practice is marked by rapid production and a rigorous attention to detail, resulting in tightly rendered drawings drawn from an extensive and evolving catalog of objects. These serialized compositions, featuring neat rows of realist imagery, range from depictions of modernist furniture, vehicles, advertisements, and archaeological artifacts. His repeated forms function as both an inventory and archive. Alongside these object studies, Lewis has recently expanded his practice to include figurative characters rendered in pen and watercolor. Artworks like “Last Night was Fun” and “Hunting Season” reflect several of the varied stylistic approaches present in Lewis’s practice.
Nick Granch is a Dearborn-based artist who works out of the PASC Southgate studio. Nick’s hyper-detailed, comic book–influenced style is stylistically influenced by retro television shows such as Robot Jones and Schoolhouse Rock, featuring characters from his original series Syd’s World and Alfie the Cat, alongside architectural elements, urban and suburban scenes. Recurring characters, particularly members of the Syd’s World bands, appear throughout his work in various settings, creating a cohesive and evolving visual narrative. Completed artworks are rendered using a combination of colored pencils, markers, and/or pen. In pieces like “Family Reunion”, he brings together many of these recurring characters, depicting their interactions within a backyard scene and reinforcing a continuous narrative across his artwork.
Together, these two artists are marked by durational practices and a high attention to detail. Lewis’ approach is informed by the instructional clarity and painterly traditions of Bob Ross and William “Bill” Alexander, reflecting his fluid and confident approach to rendering subjects. Like these prolific artists, Lewis produces between 1-2 finished pieces in a day. Nick creates highly detailed drawings that take him weeks or months to finish. Beginning with preliminary sketches developed in his sketchbook, using a myriad number of sources, Nick’s compositions will present scenes of churches or a pile of jellybeans, in which each brick or minute jellybean is rendered in computer-like exactitude. Audiences will be excited by the details and stories within stories present in both artists artworks.