White Room: Jennifer Nichols

White Columns is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition by the Brooklyn-based artist Jennifer Nichols. Nichols exhibition comprises a sequence of fourteen discretely scaled, acrylic on canvas paintings produced over the past year.

Nichols’ works propose a decidedly informal approach to formalism. Aligning the process-driven sensibility of minimalism with the casual, gestural mark-making typically associated with post-minimalist painting practices of the 1970s Nichols’ resulting works are ultimately possessed by her irreverent, almost flamboyant use of color. Conscious of the legacies of earlier approaches to nonrepresentational painting, Nichols’ work both explores and navigates its historical antecedents. About her process the artist has stated:

“Gertrude Stein once wrote that while writers must live in order to write, painters must paint in order to live. When I am painting I feel that I am not just making an object, but also creating a new life for myself. In my recent paintings, I think the brightness and exaggeration of the color palette express the urgency of this desire. I want a closeness of the mark rather than a distance from it. I want to make something as open as possible.”

Jennifer Nichols received her MFA from Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2012, and studied with Jutta Koether at Hamburg’s Hochschule fur bilende Kunste, in 2010. White Columns presented her work at NADA, Miami in 2013. Recent exhibitions include Howard Art Projects, Boston in 2013, and 5028 York, Los Angeles in 2012.