Content-Aware – Nick Shepard

For his fourth main gallery exhibit with Axis Gallery, Sacramento artist Nick Shepard presents “Content-Aware,” a group of new photographic compositions that celebrate the act of looking carefully.

For the show, Shepard has created photomontages that depict scenes of everyday loveliness made in Sacramento and beyond. His large prints, which include a dozen or more pictures blended all but seamlessly, invite viewers to spend time looking around the images, engaging with the scenes longer than they might out in the world where our attention is so often pulled a dozen directions at once.

In previous shows, Shepard has used a variety of approaches to explore the construction and consumption of photographic images, with shows that reward close looking. Each print in “Content-Aware” contains a dozen or more captures that have been blended together to create a large composition. By combining multiple images, Shepard’s mural-size prints include remarkable details that hold up under scrutiny. The images eventually reveal areas where the digital montage tools fail. Subtle shifts in composition or focus become visible, serving as reminders of the constructed nature of these pictures.

The exhibition’s title acts as an invitation to viewers and also alludes to Photoshop’s remarkable AI tool that automatically fills in one area of a picture by pulling in information from other areas in the same composition. This is just one example of many AI-based tools that are increasingly generating the images we consume. Perhaps as we look closely, we should also look carefully.

“Content-Aware” will be on view from March 4–26, 2023, with a Second Saturday reception with the artist on Saturday, March 11. Shepard will present an artist talk Saturday, March 11 at 5pm.

Artist Bio

Nick Shepard has shown at Axis since 2017, and this is his fourth solo show in the Main Gallery. In 2022 he presented “PUSH / PULL” at The Garage on the Grove. “PUSH / PULL” was an imposing and immersive reworking of the Garage that brought together Shepard’s explorations of installation and photography. In addition to Axis, his work has appeared at the Crocker Art Museum, Pence Gallery, Holland Project, the Wassaic Project, Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, and the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Shepard is based in Sacramento, where he is an Associate Professor of Photography at Sacramento State University. Shepard received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts, and his BA in Studio Art and Art History from Carleton College. nickshepard.com / @nickeshep