Nicholas Heskes
Nicholas Heskes is an artist, writer, and translator.
Will Bruno: Midnight River
By Nicholas HeskesFor the European Impressionists, the method of plein air painting was meant to be an interpretation rather than an attempt at faithful reproduction—a dramatic shift from earlier approaches to landscape painting which relied on preliminary sketches, in-studio techniques, and the work of other painters to create a convincing imitation of nature. Will Bruno finds himself situated somewhere between these two approaches to the landscape in Midnight River, his current exhibition at Europa Gallery.
Henry Gunderson: House Painting and Various Odd Jobs
By Nicholas HeskesEarly in the pandemic Henry Gunderson moved into a run-down building in Red Hook, Brooklyn. In exchange for renovating it, he was allowed to live there without rent for six months. The place became Gunderson’s home and studio, where he created the “House” series now exhibited at Perrotin Gallery alongside other new paintings that follow the same thread as much of his previous work.
Kon Trubkovich: The Antepenultimate End
By Nicholas HeskesEvery bit of color imperfection and grain on the CRT display is rendered precisely and on a magnified scale. The effect is a clash of worlds (at least on the formal level) in which archaic electronic media is worked onto elements of the Western European canon.
Clayton Patterson: Beauty Mark
By Nicholas HeskesThis series of more than 300 images, carefully selected from Patterson’s archive by curator Gryphon Rue, covers a relatively brief but volatile period between 1985 and 1999, during which Patterson played an important role as documenter of the vibrant culture, crime, and transformation of the Lower East Side.
Nina Hartmann: FOGBANK
By Nicholas HeskesA square printout taped to the table that displays the exhibition literature reads, "BUT… Would information obtained by psychic means be accurate enough to suit the Intel community's needs? Would the Intel community accept information which had been obtained through psychic means?" A black and white illustration of a stoplight accompanies these questions, as if meant to signal a moment of pause.
Kyle Breitenbach: When the Leaves Come Down
By Nicholas HeskesThe mystery of alchemy is more appealing than its promise of truth.
Susan Philipsz: Muffled Drums/The Unquiet Grave
By Nicholas HeskesNow online, this project inevitably represents a reduction of the original installation, but it is nonetheless a clever reframing that responds thoughtfully to its changed circumstances.
H. R. Giger: HRGNYC
By Nicholas HeskesH. R. Giger’s work is stunningly imaginative and darkly enticing, but it also leaves me feeling empty. Why this is is something I’ve been trying to parse out for myself—maybe I’m not alone in feeling this way. But I was confronted with this feeling once again upon visiting the retrospective of Giger’s work at Lomex gallery.
Frank Jones: 114591
By Nicholas HeskesDrawings like those made by Jones, though accepted into the canon, remain at odds with what is generally thought of as “art” as a result of their sincerity and independence. It seems to me that this type of work, which arises out of the necessity of existential conditions, has the potential to collapse the often-arbitrary division between art and life.
Daniel Gibson: Ocotillo Song
By Nicholas HeskesThe most recent exhibition by Los Angeles painter Daniel Gibson at Almine Rech summons various descriptors to mind: psychedelic, floral, surreal, Boschian. But the one that connects them all is autochthonous.
Marguerite Humeau: Birth Canal
By Nicholas HeskesBirth Canal, Marguerite Humeau’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States, is presented in conjunction with Birth Canal Drawings at CLEARING’s upper east side location
Bat-Ami Rivlin: No Can Do
By Nicholas HeskesRivlin abandons the impulse to make unlikely or surprising combinations of things convey a message, or play a role, if even a small one. The sculptures rather act out on their own, bringing attention to a permanent wound they share, not broken, repurposed, or fixed, but indefinitely repairable.
Sanya Kantarovsky: On Them
By Nicholas HeskesWhat makes a story compelling without being told? This question lingered with me after seeing Sanya Kantarovsky’s exhibition On Them. His paintings, drawings, and prints have long shared an eerie likeness to novel illustration, and give the impression of Russian novels—though only vaguely.
Ljiljana Blazevska
By Nicholas HeskesThis exhibition at 15 Orient is the first of Serbian-Macedonian painter Ljiljana Blazevska’s in the United States. The context that makes Blazevska’s work approachable in the US is obscured by the extremely personal, sequestered nature it has all of its own, that makes each painting, like a private dream or memory, untranslatable for the viewer.
David Byrd
By Nicholas HeskesDavid Byrd died in 2013 at the age of 87 in Oxford, New York. Since then his paintings have gradually received attention, resulting in a number of exhibitions in recent years
