JAIK FAULK // Constant Shaping

On view February 21–March 29, 2026
Opening reception Saturday, February 21 (2–4pm)

The way that can be spoken of
Is not the constant way;
The name that can be named
Is not the constant name.
—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Artist Jaik Faulk returns to Nationale this winter after a six year hiatus. Constant Shaping presents a suite of new work that redirects focus to the physical shaping of paint on the canvas. As a curator, Faulk has borne witness to the enmeshing of his personal worlds with his creative output. In these paintings, a viewer may recognize details from modernist objects, religious reliquaries, even ancient monolithic shapes all embedded in the compositions. Rooted in a fastidious drawing practice, the resulting abstractions are appreciative of careful composition, color, and historical reference. 

In a piece such as Austere Sculptures & Draped Canopy; The Set of an Old Movie, we investigate the mysterious and amorphous qualities that make up the narrative. A face in gray, the hull of a ship, a background with seemingly conflicting weather patterns. The various elements at play are what Faulk has termed “theoretical sculptures”—forms that are fictive and slip between recognizable options, ultimately vying for space within their invented settings. Things are interrupted and obscured, structures and patterns uncovered, and figures ultimately fixed and refined in oil paint. What the artist’s eye has imagined during the creation process might differ from what a viewer might discover in the gallery. A birch tree, sunglasses, or the artist’s cat “Maurice.” Innards, celestial bodies, boots, clay pots or funerary urns from ancient Greece. All at once these implied objects push towards the surface and demand classification. We ask ourselves, what exists on the canvas, and what exists in the world around us? Can they be one and the same? In Constant Shaping our frame of reference shifts towards unimagined potential.

Jaik Faulk is a native of Lafayette, LA, where he currently works and lives. He received his MFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2013 and his BA in Art from Portland State University in 2006. He has been the focus of solo exhibitions at Nationale, FalseFront, and Launch Pad in Portland, OR, and at Norco College, in Los Angeles. His work has also been included in group shows at The Lab, the San Francisco Art Institute, and The Old Mint, all in San Francisco; at Littman Gallery in Portland, OR; and at the Hilliard Art Museum and Basin Arts in Lafayette, LA. Alongside his studio practice, Faulk is the curator at Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette LA. He’s been represented by Nationale since the spring of 2011.

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