Celebrated Brooklyn-based artist, Nicky Nodjoumi, was born in Kermanshah, Iran in 1942. His works are conceived of as theatrical stages, where compositions of figures both serious and ridiculous, in the words of Phong Bui, “house meanings without irony, narratives without stories, humor without morality, above all creating a space that heightens the awareness of old and new history.”
Serious in subject matter and witty in execution, these rich and diverse characters enliven Nodjoumi’s narratives and allude to collective experiences underpinned by socio-political struggles, articulating the full spectrum of feelings from aggression to victimhood.
He masterfully unties disparate elements of culture, subject, and modernist styles to create paintings that spin many possible tales, yet deliberately refuse to present a singular story. As Nodjoumi explains, “My paintings investigate a pictorial story. In each work, it is clear something is going to happen, yet there is no beginning or end. Meaning is intentionally unclear, there is no single narrative. I am more interested in exploring that which is ironic.”
Nicky Nodjoumi’s works are in several prominent institutional collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; The British Museum in London; Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi; The DePaul Art Museum in Chicago; The National Museum of Cuba; and Museum of Modern Art in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg.
His recent solo exhibitions include:
- Long Day, Kansas City Art Institute, Jan. 2019;
- Earth, Fire, and Water, at White Wall Space, NYC, 2019
- Please sit down, Barakat gallery- Seoul, South Korea,
- 2018- 2019; Fractures, Third Line gallery, Dubai, 2018;
- You and Me, Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, NY, 2016;
- The Accident, The Cleveland Institute of Art, 2014;
- Chasing the Butterfly and Other Recent Paintings, Taymour Grahne Gallery, NY, 2013
