Patrick Nickell
Rosamund Felsen Gallery presents the fourth solo show of new sculptural work by Patrick Nickell. The exhibition “Letting Go” is comprised of color saturated large tabletop sculptures in which Nickell loosens his tight hold on strict abstraction and allows his figurative tendencies to emerge creating a new body of work steeped in fantasy. Nickell continues his exploration of spontaneous line, deviating from the curved flowing forms of his previous sculptures, by abruptly bursting the plaster sculptures at their ends. This exposure of tangled wire and burlap gives way to distinguishable forms: a falling figure, raised fists, protruding tongue. These forms are perhaps the explicit manifestation of the artist’s struggle to find his voice outside the realm of implicit abstraction.
Patrick Nickell is a Los Angeles-based artist. His work is included in, but not limited to, the public collections of the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA; and in Los Angeles at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Luckman Fine Arts Gallery at California State University. Nickell is also Associate Professor of Design Foundation at Woodbury University in the School of Media, Culture and Design, Los Angeles. In 2011 he was awarded the Faculty Development Grant at Otis College of Art and Design.