By Themselves, Nicholas Perry

By Themselves, Nicholas Perry
August 2 – September 14, 2019

*By Themselves*, Nicholas Perry
Installation view

*Hiding in the Short Grass*, 2019
Oil on canvas
32″ x 32″

*Say Goodnight*, 2019
Oil on canvas
22-1/2″ x 20″

*The Good Saint*, 2019
Oil on canvas
36″ x 30″

*Finally, I Can Cry*, 2019
Oil on canvas
47″ x 39-1/2″

*Shy Talker*, 2019
Oil on canvas
36″ x 30″

*Musician*, 2018
Oil on canvas
24″ x 24″

*Chrysanthemum*, 2018
Charcoal on paper
32-1/4″ x 27″, image 30-1/4″ x 25″

*Split Ends*, 2019
Charcoal on paper
22-3/8″ x 25″, image 21-1/8″ x 24″

*Well Spoken*, 2019
Charcoal on paper
33-1/4″ x 30-1/2″, image 31-1/4″ x 28-3/8″

*Waiting*, 2019
Charcoal on paper
23-1/2″ x 22-1/4″, image 22″ x 20-1/8″

*My Little Shadow*, 2019
Charcoal on paper
19″ x 17″, image 18″ x 16″

*Heads will Roll*, Nicholas Perry in conversation with Fred Stonehouse, Moderated by Shane McAdams
September 7, 2019

The Alice Wilds is pleased to announce the solo exhibition, Nicholas Perry: By Themselves, opening Friday, August 2, 2019 and continuing through September 14, 2019.

By Themselves is a selection of paintings and drawings that focuses on the history of portraiture with investigations into modernist and contemporary painting. Under those genres, Perry deals with conflicting ideas of sincerity and obsession, cliché and honesty, and ecstatic discovery alongside methodical detachment. While proposing these questions, Perry is molding the fictional space of illusion and narrative with a formal inquiry into history in order to create ambiguous figures and personalities.

Perry’s figurative paintings are built of art-historical influences, personal photography, and other visual languages. For him, painting offers a space to pose questions of representation. Perry’s responses to the painting process is one of humor, absurdity, and anxious excitement. The figure’s construction becomes a playground where he resolves these impulses while discovering and representing individuals through painting.

Nicholas Perry is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He received his BFA in painting and drawing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His work has been exhibited both locally and nationally at the Miishkooki Art Space in Chicago, Illinois, Usable Space and The Real Tinsel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and with the international visual arts platform Young Space. In 2018, Perry was one of the artists selected to be a part of the Wisconsin Biennial at the Museum of Wisconsin Art to represent Milwaukee. His work has been published by Columbia Journal of Columbia University, New York and is one of the artists chosen to be a part of New American Paintings Midwest Edition in 2018.