{"id":6431,"date":"2021-09-10T18:38:45","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T09:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/?post_type=insights&p=6431"},"modified":"2021-09-10T18:38:45","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T09:38:45","slug":"everything-is-fine","status":"publish","type":"insights","link":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/insights\/6431","title":{"rendered":"Everything Is Fine"},"content":{"rendered":"

2021.8.26 – 10.1
\nNICK DOYLE<\/p>\n

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Everything Is Fine, 2021.Acrylic and collaged denim on custom relief panel. Installed : 183 x 328 cm | 72 x 129 in. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the Artist and Perrotin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brand-name shaving cream, vending machines, everyday objects supersized \u00e0 la Oldenberg… Nick Doyle\u2019s work is rooted in the strategies of Pop Art, especially in its use of recognizable imagery. Though much of Pop\u2019s frisson rests on a kind of playful ambivalence towards its subject matter\u2014celebration or critique?\u2014Doyle is primarily interested in the latter. He mines these familiar objects for their dark psychological undercurrents.<\/p>\n

Everything Is Fine is the latest in the artist\u2019s ongoing inventory of the props of masculinity. A bowtie, an oxford shoe and the contents of a toiletry kit are just some of the personal effects that coalesce into a portrait of the kind of American everyman, nameless and plural, that Doyle wishes to examine and critique.<\/p>\n

Doyle reveals the futility of male-identified objects\u2014a suitcase and the rootless freedom it might represent is instead imbued with a quality of loneliness as it reveals its empty interior; the water cooler, a space to congregate and compete at the office, sits depopulated and forlorn; a Swiss Army knife, peacocking its various instruments, partakes in an audience-less performance… All efforts at bravura seem doomed to fail.<\/p>\n

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It Is Only a Matter of Time Before Things Get Out of Hand, 2021. Collaged denim on custom relief panel. 152 x 70 cm | 59 3\/4 x 27 1\/2 in. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the Artist and Perrotin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Asphyxiating implements abound\u2014nooses (two of them), the bowtie, a belt\u2014as metaphors for the suffocating nature of this gendered ideal. For Doyle, masculinity\u2019s narrowness, its fear of expression and emotion, is tragedy-bound. At first glance, though, such readings may not be apparent. The objects are rendered flatly and without affect, like photographs at the scene of a crime, but much in the way evidentiary documentation speaks to a much bigger picture, so do Doyle\u2019s works.<\/p>\n

Here, materials are not just a means to an end; they are endemic to the larger project at hand. Denim, Doyle\u2019s preferred material, calls forth a large swath of American history. Drawing on indigo\u2019s problematic importation from West Africa, its status as the defacto uniform of the working class and signifier of counter culture rebellion, denim is as insidious as it is iconic.<\/p>\n

New to the artist\u2019s vocabulary of materials is vegetable-tanned leather. With the simple transposition of this saddle-making material to his art practice, Doyle summons the mythic figure of the American Cowboy. He manages the implied ruggedness of that archetype with conceptual finesse. In Outlaw, the limp arms of a cactus spill out of a wooden suitcase. A set of dangling handcuffs, securing the cactus to nothing, come to represent the receding horizon of the American West, specifically the freedom and escape it has historically represented but seldom delivered.<\/p>\n

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One Foot Out the Door, 2021. Collaged denim on custom relief panel. 152 x 113 cm | 59 1\/2 x 44 1\/2 in. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the Artist and Perrotin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Doyle contrasts the grandeur of the American imaginary with the humdrum of the everyday. No One Can Know, from the artist\u2019s ongoing Executive Toy series, captures the weary resignation of the office. The wooden sculpture, an animatronic office worker at his desk, is activated by a crank arm that sets the gears in motion. The mechanics of the sculpture are left visible, exposing both the technical complexity of the work and the soulless repetitiousness of labor. The figure taps his foot distractedly, turns his head away from a monitor and opens a drawer concealing a sleeping miniature of himself, dreaming and defenseless.<\/p>\n

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Surrender, 2021. Wood, leather, brass, merino wool. 84 x 40 x 25 cm | 33 x 15 1\/2 x 9 1\/2 in. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the Artist and Perrotin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite the exhibition title\u2019s assurance that \u201ceverything is fine,\u201d a sense of disquiet runs through Doyle\u2019s vision of American life. Unassuming objects turn on a dime: an extension cord is fashioned into a noose, the glint of a razor blade entices, the image of a drain conjures a bottomless despair\u2014all point to a deadly inevitability.<\/p>\n

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No One Can Know, 2021. Wood, leather, brass, stainless steel, bronze. 54 x 36 x 41 cm | 21 x 14 x 16 in. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the Artist and Perrotin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PERROTIN SEOUL
\n5 Palpan-Gil, Jongno-Gu, Seoul, Korea
\n+82 2 737 7978<\/p>\n

WEB<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0INSTAGRAM<\/a><\/p>\n

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