Nick Irzyk & Michelle Segre

DOWNSTAIRS

Nick Irzyk’s paintings are made on foam core and mounted on canvases, the compositions for which are generated through a unique and fairly arcane process. They begin as largely abstracted drawings made on the foam core’s surface. The drawings are cut out along the drawings lines and then fit back together. The topology of the cut-lines plays a large role in informing the composition and direction of the paint strokes that are laid on top.

Surrounded by Nick’s paintings are selections from Michelle Segre’s Driftloaf series, consisting of small sculptures made from charmingly clumsy stacks of crafted objects that are topped with paint-saturated bread slices. The colorful bread slices, perched at the top of slender armature wires, warp and bend into Seussian shapes as the properties of the materials react to each other.

The placement of works in proximity by these two artists yields interesting relationships through similarities and contrasts in approach as well as result. For example, with both artists we see a delicacy and elegance underlying the results of frenetic methodologies. And, each in their own way assigns a type of permanence to the ephemeral qualities of their materials. But in contrast, the objects in Segre’s sculptures are treated almost as flat shapes, whereas Irzyk’s seemingly placid surfaces actually reveal a scarred geography of cracks and fissures.