Thomas Nozkowski – Examined Abstraction – By Matthew Bourbon

I stumbled in, sick as a dog, on the last day of Thomas Nozkowski’s exhibition at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Thomas Nozkowski – Examined Abstraction

By Matthew Bourbon

 

 

 

 

I stumbled in, sick as a dog, on the last day of Thomas Nozkowski’s exhibition at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. I knew the work. The show, with its collection of works showing blobs and angular polygons floating atop color fields, reminded me of seeing his paintings in New York and Los Angeles. Both times I came away pleased, yet slightly befuddled. I recalled his painted shapes as friendly and benign. While aroused by the simple joys of his painting, I was left confused as to what Nozkowski was pursuing by reworking early twentieth century abstraction. The paintings did not seem purposefully anachronistic, but were still burdened by historical precedence. Thankfully Nozkowski does not align himself with the heroic abstraction of the fifties. His work has always lacked that expressionistic flamboyance. Instead, his artistic kinship aligns him with oddball artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Arthur Dove. Yet, even with Nozkowski’s obvious forbearers, the work generated a life of its own. It frequently showed daring risks, while at other times it felt tired. I remembered how the familiarity of his aesthetic, and, his occasionally cloying use of color, could feel ingratiatingly like a car commercial rehashing a classic Beatles tune. Yet, despite their shortcomings, the paintings always lodged themselves in my visual memory. Over the years, Nozkowski has remained a guilty pleasure and a perpetual question mark.

Upon seeing the gathering of these twenty handsome paintings at SMU, I feel I finally have some answers to my Nozkowski questions. I’ve come to believe that Nozkowski is not a hedonist, but is instead a bit of a scientist. He has a certain range of phenomenon that he is interested in and he is methodically examining and recording his painterly experimentations. By restricting himself to working in a small format, Nozkowski not only creates a standardization from which his pictorial alterations can be seen, but by keeping the scale of his work small he also emphasizes the rigor of his project. He seems to ask, what one can do with a limited means and a basic abstract vocabulary? His answers are found in each of his idiosyncratic paintings.

Essentially, Nozkowski’s art is an art of listing. It’s as if he is compiling a compendium of all the possible moves that can be made in the realm of abstraction. He seems a more sincere Jonathan Lasker—perhaps less arch and hyper-controlled. In this small survey includes a whole smattering of formal invention. The paintings highlight techniques: layering, transparency, textural modeling, sanding, hard-edged taping and tonal gradation. Precision is set against clumsiness as the articulated edge reacts to the fuzziness of soft brushwork. His paintings situate themselves as icons glorifying pictorial inventiveness and contained freedom. They are the poster children for the merits of abstraction. In this role, Nozkowski often straddles the thin line between incompetence and grace. This equivocation was the source of much of my uncertainty when I have seen Nozkowski’s work in the past. Yet, this pictorial friction has revealed itself as one of the prime reasons why I keep returning to his art. Nozkowski understands that freedom is at its most potent when it is limited by some external means. Appreciation comes from contrasts. Nozkowski’s paintings are like little haikus seeking vibrancy by juxtaposing simple geometric elements and smart compositional arrangements. His is an art of clarity. Of course some paintings are better than others. Occasionally the layered changes in his work feel unnecessarily clunky. But the searching tone and willingness to falter give the paintings piquancy.

The other strength of the work is its ability to render visible the history of its own making. One can follow Nozkowski’s aesthetic decisions because his palimpsest approach can be peeled away like the skin of an onion. Nozkowski knows this, and therefore brings the qualities of the paintings’ construction to the forefront of his artistic concerns. This emphasis on rudimentary formalism may seem retrograde and even quaint, but somehow Nozkowski imbues his work with an earnestness that sidesteps the colloquial elements of his approach.

Despite all the signs of the work that point to a kind of academic abstraction interested in its own navel, Nozkowski pulls off the unthinkable: he takes what are ordinary components relying only on themselves and through sheer will he manages to generate heat. What are essentially beginning student painting problems are elevated in Nozkowski’s hands to something more risky. The paradox of this dynamic is the crux of Nozkowski’s appeal. He works in the realm of the known and shifts our attention to the unknown, while we think we are just relaxing in the comfort of our fulfilled expectations. In the restrained world of formalism, Nozkowski seems to imply that it is enough to be diligently faithful to ones artistic inclinations—even if they seem banal. After many years and many examinations, I’ve come to think he may be right. Finally having addressed some stubborn questions, I exited the gallery light-headed from fever, but quizzically satiated by a willful and persistent group of paintings.