Nigel Van Wieck, 112 Greene Street Gallery, New York
Until very recently, Van Wieck painted closely observed, delicately rendered images of contemporary people and places. Now the airy textures of these earlier works are gone, replaced by statuesque modeling and aggressive, vividly-colored patterns. Where once there were men and women of familiar urban kinds (portrait subjects who, it was clear, would have an informed […]
Nigel Van Wieck, Germans Van Eck Gallery, New York
Points, Tatistcheff & Company Inc., New York
Working Girls, Alex Reid & Lefevre Gallery, London
Nigel van Wieck’s narrative pastels are set in Manhattan’s nightclubs, bars and bedrooms. Their naked vulnerable women and clothed predatory men tell us a lot about power in that city; who has it and more importantly, who does not. The women in the paintings often appear trapped in the spotlight. Pinned butterflies, they writhe in […]
Nigel Van Wieck, Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold
Van Wieck’s new series of pictures of Miami are among his finest works. Many are depiction of people pursuing the pleasures of the day, and at night these groups gather on Ocean Drive, 16 pastel blocks paralleling the deep Atlantic Ocean beach. Tightly lined with restored Art Deco hotels, cafes and restaurants, the drive becomes […]
Working Girls, Tatistcheff & Company Inc., New York
In seeking to make feeling the basis of a new contemporary narrative art, Nigel van Wieck has developed a highly suggestive mode of image-making, one of patently seductive appeal. Working in a forthright, descriptive realist vein, the artist presents discreet glimpses of the private side of human relationships in this group of recent pastels. A […]
Dancing, Beadleston Gallery, New York
Nigel van Wieck spent much of the 1990s painting portraits, and it shows. Not in the sense that his works in Dancers, at the Beadleston Gallery, are actual likenesses. The scenes are invented and seem to take place anywhere from the Roaring Twenties to only last night. Their concentrated abandon and hilarity populate a nightlife […]
Players, Galerie Elisabeth Michitsch, Vienna
The characters in Nigel Van Wieck’s exhibition ‘Players’ can be grouped in two halves: they are either in recreational pursuit or they are performing, and Van Wieck makes this distinction by placing an accessory on the faces of the performers, ie, sunglasses, makeup or a mask. But although the two groups are very different, they […]
Escape, Galerie Elisabeth Michitsch, Vienna
For nearly two decades, Nigel Van Wieck has been evolving a distinctive idiom firmly rooted in the tradition of American realism. His small-format oils offer glimpses of classic Americana: racetracks and baseball fields, toy sailboats skimming over a pond, tourists relaxing on sun-drenched beaches. Typically his are solitary figures, often recalling the loners once celebrated […]
