Crean & Company announces its forthcoming solo viewing room of works by American painter Alexander Nolan. The Accommodations of Desire which runs from 12 August – 24 September 2021 on www.creanandcompany.com presents a new body of 31 works by the New York-based artist, whose paintings conjure a colourful world of fantastical realism, often inspired by scenes of life in his city.
The Accommodations of Desire is a black-humoured blend of the satirical, the surreal and the salacious.
Straddling the language of dream and absurdity, each vignette-like canvas is populated by an imaginative and memorable cast of characters. It is a world of candlelit dinners with skeletons, sweetly serenading devils, and violin concertos attended by cats and dogs. His work is a contemporary reminder of painting as a deeply narrative medium, echoing the art of comic strips and cartoon illustrations exemplified by The New Yorker.
Nolan’s influences are broad. His medium span oils, acrylics, pastels watercolours and inks on paper which you will see reflected in these works.
Alexander Nolan (b. 1980, Milwaukee) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of art history who later trained as an artist at the MFA New York Studio School, Nolan’s work is an echo Combining these traditions with the influence of contemporary popular culture – from the commercial palettes of The Simpsons to the darkly comic storytelling of Tom & Jerry.
In scenes that portray the hustle and bustle of life on 42nd Street, or 77th and Madison, there is a lively and now nostalgic quality to Nolan’s works – many of which were painted over the course of the lockdown.
‘It was quite a year, 2020,’ says Nolan. ‘I was truly inspired by the time. I’ve never made such a body of work that relates to the present time as a collective’. Examples such as Stocking Up On Toilet Paper poke fun at the pandemonium of 2020, while others such as On Nancy’s Couch evoke the absurd tedium of self-isolation.
As Nolan’s first solo show with Crean & Company, this exhibition is testament to the enduring power of his imagination as an artist. ‘I enjoy walking through my mind as if it were a forest,’ Nolan says. ‘I pick out here and there something of interest that I feel like expressing and exploring more deeply through the act of drawing. There is something mesmerising about the appearance of things – drawing the world around me stimulates the world within me’.
