Ohio, Mr. John (vague & ordinary worlds)

Nicholas Hatfull is a thinker in the flaneur tradition, an urban rambler with an open, kinky, catholic eye. His paintings of modern life, via all the things that aren’t people, are both dissociative and total. Over here they are brushy and impressionistic, as if a grazed encounter or gauzy memory; over there as direct as advertising, sharp and clear for cultureless commercial sear. He makes room on a single canvas for these forms, textures and attitudes to collide. And between these elements is the residue they leave upon each other, us, and the world.
Hatfull’s new paintings reveal the artist’s most experimental inclinations, a restless reshuffling of elements (furniture foam, food containers from chain restaurants, playground structures, etc.) through which the artist calibrates a personal offbeat, absurdist lyricism. Stains are important—they speak of forms revealing themselves and consuming themselves at the same time. Vessels are important—they hold a charge. It’s a turbulent business, life.