Nick Goss ‘Herz Man Sky’ Simon Preston Gallery

Dystopias abound in Englishman’s Nick Gross’ first New York City exhibition ‘Herz Man Sky’. The press release has a quote from the master of disaster Cormac McCarthy while the artist further references a series of failed political ideologies from, ‘colonialism to Fascism to the American Frontier.’ The works in the exhibition, large oil paintings and small watercolors on paper, of concrete buildings surrounded by palm trees, are painted in thin washes of sepia and grisaille. The exhibition, consisting of six large paintings with an extended series of watercolors, was created by the artist in a residency in Vienna where a local thrift store named Herzmansky supplied the title of the show.

                The paintings, brushed in broad washes with splotches of thick marks that describe the form, have various lineages from Matta by way of Magnus Von Plesson, or the movie posters of Peter Doig. Despite the literary references and topical subject matter the paintings feel too perfunctory to be truly satisfying.  Painterly washes that just take up space stand in for real pictorial investigation. The wash technique better serves the watercolors. Fragility and the vulnerability that real political failure induces are more in evidence with the works on paper. Seen in tandem with the large paintings, however, the 1:1 correlation of techniques further erodes the visual force of the larger canvases. The one painting that had the right amount of marks to wash is Lamp which feels like Michael Krebber by way of the Casbah. The exhibition ‘Herz Man Sky’ shows a fine literary predilection that should be more in service to a painterly sensibility.   

Nick Goss 
Lamp 
2011 
oil on canvas 

78.7 x 51.2 in. / 200 x 130 cm.

Nick Goss 'Herz Man Sky'

Nick Goss 
Carousel 
2011 

Nick Goss 
Turbine 
2011 
oil on canvas 
78.7 x 118.1 in. / 200 x 300 cm