Send Nudes (2022)
Centring her art around topics of self-identity, Nicole Kozak primarily works on themes of gender, queer sexuality, family history and personal psyche. However, for the Send Nudes exhibition, she is exploring collaboration on an intimate level.
Send Nudes (2022) is a series of paintings that are done in collaboration with the figure on the painting. The subjects of the paintings receive their canvas and paint an abstract on it without instructions. This abstract is used as the base for the painting itself and initiates the process of the rest of the piece, involving the figures directly with the art creation process.
Nicole Kozak uses aspects such as colour choice, shape placement, and textures of the abstracts to decide where to display the figure and how to paint the figure while keeping the original elements of the background intact. The artist must interpret what perhaps the original abstract meant to accomplish and then push the idea further or change it completely. The paintings are now hung without a description, leaving the audience to interpret multiple levels of meaning hidden in the piece.
Formally, art has been advertised as a solo endeavor, with assistants left unnamed. Here, each painting bares the name of all their artists, taking on the figure’s name as the title -unless instructed otherwise. For Nicole Kozak, collaboration is in every art work she makes as the process of discussing her pieces and bouncing ideas off of others is the main way she initiates her art creation. This project is no exception.
Nicole Kozak is a Toronto artist, currently studying at UTSC. Having done art for a long period of time, she branches out to many mediums, such as woodcarving under the late Liv Babra, painting, and print work to name a few. Nicole Kozak takes Marshall McLuhan’s concept of “The medium is the message” seriously and aims to pick mediums that work with the topic rather than her comfort level.
Photo courtesy of the artist.
Opened on March 11th, 2022.
Please contact Gallery 1265 for potential exhibition archival.
Watch an exclusive interview with the artist here.
