Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

Nikki Maloof

b. 1985, Peoria, IL / based in South Hadley, MA

For her first collaboration at the workshop, Nikki Maloof worked in a single color on a stone to explore and expand upon the graphite and charcoal drawings she develops in her sketchbooks before putting brush to canvas. Nestled among Supper’s fantastically towering flora, modeled after the gardens of her South Hadley, Massachusetts home and studio, is a small, doll-like visage, a crawling spider, and a caterpillar. Coupled with an underfoot dog, warped hands and silverware, and a curious cat, these details underscore Maloof’s distinctive blend of domestic intimacy and playful tension.

“For Nikki Maloof, art is a way to organize time, to inhabit it and to ocuupy spaces” writes curator, critic and art historian Marianne Derrien. “When the public and private spheres are interwoven with persistent tension and anxiety, painting allows her to capture the very essence of things and beings in order to acknowledge human distress.”

Maloof received a BFA from Indiana University in 2008, and her MFA from Yale University in 2011. Maloof’s work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions at Perrotin Gallery, Tokyo and Paris; Museo Picasso, Málaga, Spain; Jack Hanley Gallery, New York; and The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York among others. In 2011, Maloof received the Helen W Winternitz Award in Painting and Printmaking.

Artist’s Website