Nikki Maloof. Around the Clock
PERROTIN, Paris
From November 23rd, 2024 until January 25th, 2025
A year in the making, Nikki Maloof’s exhibition Around the Clock will be opening at Perrotin Paris tomorrow—and expect her signature maximalism.
For this American artist, her first memory of art was when her mum signed her up to an art show as a little girl, and as Nikki recalls, “it was a drawing of flamingos having a feeding frenzy. There was fish flying everywhere and blood.”
A style that has stayed with her, she says that “in a lot of ways my interests haven’t really deviated that far from the flamingo drawing. I’m attracted to drama, some blood, and the colour pink. I’m certainly not a minimalist.”
The Paris show may not feature flamingos, Nikki’s gone big picture instead and the aim here is to capture the profound moments in life, and how they weave in and out of daily life, “I was thinking a lot about time and my ever-changing relationship to it. It’s always lurking around the corner or staring at you in the face of your children so there’s a lot of tension to mine in that topic alone.”
Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.
“I think I’m equally drawn to the beauty and the horrors of everyday life. They always live side by side in my head. I’m trying to balance these elements within a painting.”
Drawing inspiration from other artists, this show nods to two other creatives, “One is the Northern Renaissance painter Dieric Bouts,” who was famous for his Portrait of a Man of 1462, his large-scale works of the Last Supper and two secular panels of the Justice of Emperor Otto, circa 1473-1475. Nikki continues, “Aside from the unbelievable intricacy of the works from that era, I love the way he paints figures. They are unlike anyone else. I think it has something to do with the eyes.”
Influenced by Italian painter and stage designer, Domenico Gnoli, who shares a similar approach of capturing closely cropped paintings of everyday items; he famously said, “I always employ simple, given elements, I don’t want either to add or take anything away. I have never even wanted to deform; I isolate and represent.” Nikki says she’s had a year’s long obsession with the Roman artist, “There is so much pressure in his paintings of seemingly simple objects. They are like poems, compressed works that say a lot with few elements. They were also just so beautifully made.”
Choosing to leave behind American urban life, Nikki Maloof lives in the countryside of western Massachusetts. In her recent paintings, she focuses on vital actions such as eating, washing, discussing, or sleeping.
Having relocated to South Hadley, Massachusetts, the location feeds into Nikki’s domestic scenes—the protagonist is the house—reflecting our consciousness and all its facets: “away from the eyes of others, in close contact with desires, weakness, relationships of intimate power.”
For further information perrotin.com.
Photo: Claire Dorn. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.
