Nicola Tyson at Marc Foxx

If ever there was an artist' artist, it was the solipsistic one, fulfilled by reveling in their own painting history, the be all and end all and the singular compulsion for painting. Often when I see painting shows these days, people who fit this description are the ones that are still doing something interesting with the medium itself. Those who carry, intentionally or not, the flag of Cezanne in their ceaseless experiments with distortions,
their perceptions, how it expresses when cast into a figure, a landscape, etc, are the ones who seem to make me feel something buttery and living when I look at their work. Other work is smarter, more relevant, more necessary, but it really is refreshing to take a break from all those theories and ethics and just enjoy looking at a drawing or a painting, letting it's lines, it's gesture, the tactile qualities and the visible considerations, pondered long and hard for effect the mind. And with Nicola's paintings on view at Marc Foxx, there's more than just the visceral to chew on. Eight paintings in the main gallery and sixteen drawings one gallery down at Domestic provide plenty of food for thought. The figures depicted in these works, often distorted grotesquely/elegantly with umbilicals connected to genitals, turbans and women, distorted faces remind one a bit of Francis Bacon and John Graham, revealing a disturbing psychology that through color, touch and sensibility becomes almost erotically appealing.
After reviewing Robert Wilson, Nicola Tyson is a good antidote, renewing faith in the alchemical medium of paint. Nicola lives in New York and shows with Freidrich Petzel. Her works are included in major collections and museums, and now, for the first time, she exhibits in LA.