NIKKI MALOOF

B. 1985, Peoria, IL
Lives and works in South Hadley, MA

Nikki Maloof’s paintings depict the world hidden within the mind. Imagined interiors and animals become proxies for the human experience. Her subjects convey existential loneliness, but that loneliness is buoyed by humor, capricious paint handling, and the use of a saturated palette. A squiggle depicting ground meat, a cat’s meow being mistaken for a howl, or a comically disillusioned fish being filleted before our eyes, all draw the viewer’s attention to the melancholic and at times brutal tone of the imagery.  At the same time, the paint handling and colors attempt to undermine the dark nature of these images all together. This self-defeating melodrama points to an ambivalent view of existence, a need to laugh and cry even at once.

The paintings begin simply, often catalyzed by a basic formal painting idea. Maloof upsets familiarity and dodges cliché by treating areas of the canvas disparately, and by allowing patterns and textures to exist side by side.  Her painting process is a search for and then encouragement of the points where paint overwhelms subject. When this happens, time falls away and unexpected things are unearthed, things that are necessarily unplanned and unnamable, and that seem intrinsic to the material itself.

Nikki Maloof has been the subject of Solo Exhibitions at Perrotin, Paris, France; Sorry We're Closed, Brussels, Belgium; Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, NY; and The Pit, Los Angeles, CA. Group exhibitions include ‘What Did I Know of Your Days: Danielle Orchard and Nikki Maloof’ at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark; ‘36 Paintings’ at Harper's Books in East Hampton, NY; ‘Animal Kingdom’ at Alexander Berggruen in New York, NY; ‘Anniversary Exhibition’ at Jack Hanley Gallery; ‘Drawing Island’ at The Journal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; ‘Horror Vacui, or The Annihilation of Space’ at Misako and Rosen, Tokyo; ‘A Forest on the Edge of Time’ at The Pit, Los Angeles, CA; ‘The Great Figure Two’ at The Journal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; ‘Imagine’ at Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy; ‘Let's Get Figurative’ at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, NY; ‘Tiger Tiger’ at Salon 94, New York, NY; among others.

Nikki Maloof has received several awards, most recently the Helen W. Winternitz Award in Painting and Printmaking and the Gloucester Landscape Prize. Maloof received her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from Indiana University in 2008 and Master’s of Fine Art in Painting from Yale University in 2011.

Nikki Maloof lives and works in South Hadley, MA.