SF Arts: Maybaum Gallery - "Gatherings" by Simon Nicholas
- Details
- Category: Art, Museums, Galleries
- Published on Saturday, 03 April 2021 12:48
- Written by Janet Walker
Maybaum Gallery presents a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Norway-based artist Simon Nicholas. In this series of paintings, Nicholas explores people in relationship to their surroundings, engaged in everyday life. This is his second solo show at Maybaum Gallery.
A group, a crowd, a mob, a pack, a throng, a party. Before 2020 these words represented the most commonplace scenes of daily life--people, together. Simon Nicholas (b. 1954) has been working on his depictions of gatherings for half a decade, but thanks to the social isolation of the 2020 pandemic, new implications in his work begin to emerge.
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Simon Nicholas | Park VII, Acrylic on linen, 51 x 61 inches
Nicholas is adept at composing his crowds in such a way that we understand he's collapsing the boundaries of traditional subject/object roles of picture making and picture consumption.
Simon Nicholas | Atrium, Oil on linen, 63 x 67 inches
In Gallery VI (below) a group of art viewers is depicted head-on--they stare directly at us but they aren't challenging our gaze, they are simply looking at a painting.
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In the exterior scene in Park VII (above), the artist's figures fill an expansive park field looking in the same direction. The subject of their attention is offstage or obscured in the darkening colors and melting gesture of the aerial perspective.
A global longing and a collective desire to simply be together has emerged in almost every conversation we now have. As the pandemic starts to recede and we allow ourselves to get excited at the thought of having a drink at a bar, seeing live music or walking through a museum with a close friend, we start to see the beauty and the meaning in simple, blissful proximity to one another.
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Everyday togetherness has been Simon Nicholas's subject matter for years. In 2021 these works become flares of hope, a visual taste of what's to come, and a reminder that life is made in the seemingly inconsequential moments of our togetherness.
Simon Nicholas |Gallery VI, Acrylic on linen, 51 x 61 inches
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BIOGRAPHY: Simon Nicholas (b. 1954, London, England) lives and works in Norway. His education was completed at the Bath Academy of Art and Camberwell School of Art (UK), the Academy of Fine Art (Istanbul, Turkey), and the State Academy of Fine Art (Oslo, Norway) His paintings have been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including England, Norway, and Luxembourg, and in the United States in New York, Chicago, Miami, and San Francisco. His work is in the collections of the DnB Bank, Bjørvika, Oslo; Oslo S Utvikling (OSU), Oslo; Northumbria University's Permanent Collection, Newcastle, UK; Old Mutual Art Collection, London; Skien Billed- galleri, Norway; AT&T USA, among other public and private collections. He has taught painting at Oxford School of Art, England and University of Northumbria, Newcastle, England. Nicholas is currently a professor of painting and is represented by Maybaum Gallery.
Maybaum Gallery is currently open by appointment only.
Maybaum Gallery | 49 Geary Street, Suite 416 | San Francisco, CA 94108
415-658-7669 | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
