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Review of Nikholis Planck at sophiajacob by Cara Ober

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Last week I viewed “18×24,” a solo exhibit by local artist Nikholis Planck at sophiajacob, Baltimore’s newest, smallest, and best photographed art space. A few days later, I still haven’t decided how I feel about the work or if that even matters. The show definitely provoked a lot of conflicting reactions in me, in a range from elation to annoyance. Either way, it’s gotten under my skin, which is a hell of a lot more interesting than an indifferent reaction.

At a first glance, it is obvious that Planck works at a frenetic pace, that much of his work is about a hasty, repetitive, accumulative process. This is different than most process-based work. For Planck, process is content, not a means to an end.

This is most obvious in the three-dimensional ‘bale’ of drawings displayed in a back alcove. It appears to be a stack of hundreds of pieces of newsprint, which all bear, ostensibly, impatient, scrawling oil stick drawings. Bound by string, so you can’t see the individual drawings, the pile functions as a sculptural work and effectively transforms the precious way drawings are typically experienced. It comes off as humorous and self-depreciating, and this is refreshing. Honestly, I wish more artists would make hundreds of drawings and then bind them up so no one can look at them. This piece is Planck’s strongest work in the show.

On the walls of the front gallery, a small selection of from Planck’s huge oevre of black, white, and gray gestural abstractions hang in a simple grid of (how big are they? oh, right…) 18×24″ canvasses. Rendered with a big brush and swirling, washy strokes, these paintings remind me why I never let my Painting 1 students use black paint. There’s a sense of plasticity, of artificial light and institutional walls, in the range of steely grays created by pure black mixed with white. In some cases, Planck drizzles squiggles of gel medium onto the surface to create a slight relief in the surface and a contrast between the shiny medium and the flat paint. What is most perplexing about these paintings is that the gestural marks relate to abstract expressionism, but the surfaces are flat. In Planck’s paintings, there is a disconnect between a genre which, historically, is rooted in an emotive way of working and one that is more rote and mechanical, more Warholian pop than anything else.

Of the eighteen canvasses, four stand apart from the rest. They are flat, pure black with “18×24” stenciled three times in white letters, floating in their center. The Jasper Johns reference is a relevant justification for the work, but, more importantly, the black paintings hold the thing together visually. Like anchors or punctuation marks, the denser paintings, asymmetrically placed for visual balance, keep the mess of loose, mushy goo in focus. Read as one large painting, this piece questions mass production, artistic originality, and the relationship between different types of mark making, in the same way that Warhol’s Oxidation Paintings mimic more expressive modes. Taking this idea a step further, they come off as an abbreviated version of gesture painting for the information age, like a texted version of a more complex idea.

There is an additional sculptural ‘intervention’ at the back of the gallery – a desk with some of Planck’s zines and drawings and drawing materials. There’s a plastic comb included, so I am making an assumption. Also, there’s one more black painting with the 18×24 moniker, floating solo on one of the gallery’s two biggest walls. I’m tired of seeing people’s studios set up inside the gallery, but the mostly blank white wall is a bold move, and it functions as an elegant critique of art gallery culture, where the space between works of art is proportional to it’s value, and implied scarcity.

In this capacity, Curator Deirdre Smith provides a solid counter-balance for Planck’s excessive output. In this tidy, white gallery setting, less counts for more. Beyond individual works or style, the way works are grouped, spaced, and deliberately excluded becomes a compelling exercise in elegant restraint. The connection between artist and curator is palpable in this show, and the combination of their decisions is a fortuitous melding. There’s a full color catalogue with Smith’s curatorial essay available for perusal and purchase, a lasting professional testament to the curatorial endeavor.

Nikholis Planck curated by Deirdre Smith  is up for the month of October at sophiajacob.
* all photos by David Armacost
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