Gallery Two, Chicago
Paul Nudd‘s fifth show at Western Exhibitions, Plasticakes and Gore Orbs, is overrun by outrageously crafted and colored mutant ceramic heads. Nudd’s artistic output — paintings, prints, drawings, video, sculpture, installations, zines, publishing projects —over the past twenty years is prolific and protean and yet, this is first ever show devoted solely to ceramics. Nudd has been committed to central themes of primal sludge, growth and disease, systems of classification, mutation and life, patterning and mark making, all of which are evident in his hilariously garish ceramic sculptures. Plasticakes and Gore Orbs will open with a public reception on Friday, November 6 from 5 to 8pm and will run through December 19. Gallery hours are 11am to 6pm, Tuesday to Saturday.
Hand-built and heavily pockmarked, Paul Nudd’s recent foray into the world of clay has yielded a host of cartoon-inspired entities: little hand-molded beings, each one, that are all together stressed, maniacal, and demented… collapsing under their own hilarity and fleshy folds. In the studio, the clay seems to want to form itself into these dubious heroes. As always, mutation and decomposition are abundant here, not only as a physical aspect of the work, but as a pop-cultural, quasi-conceptual framework. With a multitude of references to the heavily textured and visceral forms of 80’s junk culture, each piece caricatures formal exaggeratedness. Some of these heads are sprouting more little heads. Or using heads as hats. The lines between absorption and expurgation blur. The color schemes are truly multi-colored, a significant departure in relation to older work.
Paul Nudd’s solo and two-person shows include Bourouina Gallery in Berlin, Hap Gallery in Portland, OR, Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn, telephonebooth in Kansas City and the Hyde Park Art Center, Bodybuilder & Sportsmen, and Dogmatic, all in Chicago. His work has been included in group shows in Dusseldorf, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Houston, Denver and was included in Seeing Is a Kind of Thinking: A Jim Nutt Companion at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. His prodigious zine work can be found in several national artist book collections including the Museum of Modern Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; New Jersey Public Library; National Academy of Design, New York; Indiana University and School of the Art Institute of Chicago His collaborative printmaking work with the comix artist ONSMITH has been written about in Art in Print and one of their prints is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art. His work has been written about in the Chicago Tribune, art ltd, Modern Painters, New American Paintings and New City. Paul Nudd received his MFA from the University of Illinois-Chicago in 2001. He is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago and he lives and works in Berwyn, Illinois.