Nick Modrzewski: Pulping at the Forum

Utilising a confluence of painting techniques, from semi-abstract mark making to carefully drawn patterns and blurrily airbrushed faces, the paintings depict a range of scenes. They are warped, chaotic and continually undergoing drastic changes: backgrounds and foregrounds seem to oscillate, confounding a straightforward reading. The figures take on mythical or fantastical dimensions, seemingly both of this world and apart from it – spectres, historical characters and unidentifiable beings. 

This is Modrzewski’s take on social interaction: from a simple verbal exchange to a formal negotiation, interpersonal relations are densely complex scenarios. The very act of communication – the sharing of an emotion or the expression of an idea – becomes a labyrinth of visual references and cues, replicating the experience of being born into language for the first time, primordial and unruly. 

Heads receive special treatment in the universe of Pulping at the Forum, propagating and multiplying like clusters of mushrooms or inflating like balloons. Sometimes they are connected to bodies, other times they float in space. For Modrzewski, the head is the symbolic sovereign ruler of the body, the rational dictator or chieftain. It is the head that attempts to bring the body into a state of order and control. Modrzewski subjects these heads to various types of mockery and distortion: noses of mixed shapes and sizes spill out from faces, tacked on like absurd theatrical prosthetics, undercutting their authority.  

Ultimately, these paintings depict the tension between fitting into the formal and rational structures of the world, and the visceral experience of living in a body and interacting with another.

"There is a logic in these worlds, these planes, that is to a point inexplicable, yet somehow comprehendible. Despite their rational qualities they are each contradictory paintings in their own way."

– Nick Modrzewski