"Lots of action, still with plot"
Nick Fagan on how he made "Hi-Fructose," on view in "Rooted in Transit" at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery
Nick Fagan brushes and splatters like an action painter, then cuts and layers domestic textiles. In “Rooted in Transit,” his two-person show with Lavaughan Jenkins at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, he uses moving blankets in every work save a jazzy installation of crocheted afghans on the rear wall. Moving blankets are tough, padded, meant to protect. In this show, they tangle with children’s sheets and crocheted throws.
His piece “Hi-Fructose” conveys the chaos of dissolution. At the same time, it reads like something rough breaking away to reveal softness inside. Soft, but with an antic, thrift-store aesthetic. Nick says below that “Hi-Fructose” is “a representation of self as I deal with being bipolar.” It looks like agitated gestures trapped in sludge or concrete.
While the tension is fraught, the tactility is grounding.
Nick writes:
I set up a set of formulas/rules to give my process structure. The material elements build another structure to explore, based on the material and limitations I set. An example is moving blankets and crochet materials, and how to get the emotion out of them. The process is a play of extreme brush strokes and splatter. I set up boundaries to give my intuitive process direction and focus when working in the confined space of a large wall or stretched canvas.
I am cutting with an X-ACTO knife, carving away the first layer to reveal a second layer, then binding the two layers by sewing them together to make one. It looks like a painting, but I don’t see it that way.