NIKKI MALOOF AT SORRY WE'RE CLOSED
"Gutted"
- Until 07.05.22
© Hugard & Vanoverschelde
My paintings depict a world hidden within my mind where imagined interiors, and animals enact a psychological dark comedy. A squiggle of ground meat, a cat’s meow mistaken for a scream, or a comically disillusioned fish being fileted before our eyes, all draw the viewer's attention to the melancholic and at times, brutal tone of the imagery. These subjects suggest existential dread, but that dread is undermined by humor, lively paint handling, and the use of a saturated palette. This self-defeating melodrama points to an ambivalent view of existence, to a need to laugh and cry and scream at once.
The paintings begin simply, often catalyzed by a basic paint idea or single nagging image. I am always searching for ways of upsetting familiarity within my world by treating areas of the canvas disparately, and by allowing a myriad of textures to coexist. As I work, I search for and then encourage the points where paint overwhelms the subject. When this happens, unexpected things are unearthed, things that are necessarily unplanned and unnamable, and that seem intrinsic to the material itself.
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