It makes sense that Nick Santoro’s work covers every surface of his studio. He offers an apology but it’s a reflection of his activity in divergent directions rather than a chaotic process. There’s a bunch of exhibitions for Santoro in the near future, and the works have various destinations. Nick shows me documentation photos of sculptures piled up against a tree at night, torchlit. The objects have been temporarily exposed to light, existing as they do in dark corners like freaky garden pottery or the remnants of a punk ritual in air dried clay.
There’s a great piece hanging on the back of a door, a bulky KingGee worksuit as the support for a painting of human figures and a graffitied brick wall. Santoro shows me an old photo of the original anonymous graffiti piece, long since removed. This is an example of the assemblage mode he uses where a composition is more than the sum of its parts. References to events, people, found images and vernacular architecture are pulled into his world. It is a way of configuring time and event, of reining in the transitory and the social. He brings together an uneasy alliance to filter and process an accretion of imagery, characters and life events.
Individual characters and objects seem pulled into the painting from the corners like marionettes. In one instance a half-man at the bottom in dark glasses and an army jacket shares space with a woman in red on the double bass. A kid in blue jeans has surfed in from the top right, now standing atop an orange car. And furthering this uneasy relationship between surface and object, paintings in this show have slid off the walls and onto denim-clad figures all lumpen on the ground.
There are strange illusions of depth perception, where a couple of Gucci art stars with octopus arms and tiny hands reach for martinis on a precariously positioned trolley. A red balloon hovers in an unknowable space behind them. Deeper still lies the cosmos through an arched window. There are also the gaps between people and things awkwardly cohabiting: the space between Vogue editor Anna Wintour and an old Quake4 gaming poster; the moon emoji grinning in proximity to two moustachioed men in argyle sweaters. A giant foot lobs down from above, as per a god, while a woman in a yellow dress sweeps a kelpie into the centre of the scene. And when you visit the show, there is the gap between you, standing in the gallery, and Kerry prone on the floor.
In the corner of Santoro’s studio is a tiled sunlit area, tubes of acrylic piled next to an encrusted palette where colours mix. A wilted bunch of flowers sit in the middle, the old flower water and the old paint water. It’s a clear indication that paintings are revisited multiple times. A pile of divergent art books are a nearby image resource, as is the internet of images and the absurdities of real life. Endless permutations of pop culture and the ostentatious behaviour of the rich find their way into Santoro’s populated kingdoms, where fashion mimics modes of contemporary art while the art scene desires a more transitional space. Carparks and concrete bunkers where skaters might adapt objects to their own means form an aesthetic fraternity with contemporary galleries. Some sites pictured by Santoro feel like the moment the lights go up after a gallery event, the awkward transition from performance mode to, “Okay, let’s clean up and go.”
3MOT1ON1 explores a more progressive fragmentation of the relationship between painting and frame. This breakdown is further achieved with work appearing on the back of clothing and the appearance of sculptures like Kerry personifying the paintings. This is Nick Santoro’s second solo exhibition at The Egg & Dart. -Melody Willis
