February 27 – April 3, 2016

Arrowhead Gallery

Pudding Fink by Paul Nudd, 2014, Acrylic and mixed media collage on canvas, 22 x 28 in.

Paul Nudd's Artist Statement:
My large vertical figure drawings depict cartoonishly terrifying mutants, alien/human mash-ups encrusted with tumors, warts, lesions, growths, and misplaced hair. These hyper-hermaphroditic figures map bizarre physical characteristics with green being a prevalent color, representing life, growth, bacteria, mold, fungus and monsters. These slightly-larger than (human) full-body sized portraits are radioactive icons that find redemption in disease, being self-aware bodies in a paranoid age, reveling in genetic mutations, bad pharmaceuticals and environmental degradation. Mutation occurs under the twisted and exaggerated physical characteristics of puberty: armpit hair, rampant acne, overall asymmetry, misshapen breasts, enlarged privates, gender confusion, hormonal shifts, mood swings and pesky bodily functions.

My mixed-media "portrait" paintings on canvas offer up images of head-like entities emerging from colorful thick swaths of paint. I like to refer to these seemingly random, yet tightly composed areas as "material cannibalism”. This is a self-contained, enclosed system featuring the use of highly specific textured materials, such as modeling clay, hair, lint and string. Sealed in layers of gel medium, these heads / non-heads seem to form themselves intuitively through the painting process. The results are often surprising: brightly colored and fluorescent mustached entities speckled with fuzzy external brains, huge facial scabs, bulging eyeball-like masses, various bumps, lumps and skids, gaping holes and mysterious pockets of vaporous nothingness. Simultaneously forming and deforming, their predicament and distress have been captured in dead-on portrait fashion.

Bio:
Paul Nudd was born in Harpenden, England in 1976. He received his MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2001. Nudd currently divides his time between Chicago and Cicero, and he teaches at Columbia College Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Recent exhibitions include Bourouina Gallery in Berlin, Germany, Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn, Western Exhibitions and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. Notably, Nudd was awarded the Illinois Arts Council’s Artist Fellowship in 2009.

Lecture: November 19, 2014
in Von Ohlen Hall, room 201, Sugar Grove Campus
All our lectures are free and open to the general public.

Workshop: November 19, 2014
in Von Ohlen Hall, room 200, Sugar Grove Campus
Our workshops are open to all current Waubonsee students (registration required).

For more information about the art exhibitions at Waubonsee Community College, contact Cecilia Vargas, Art Coordinator, at (630) 466-2964.

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CONTACT

Art Department:
WCCArtDepartment@waubonsee.edu

Art Coordinator:
Cecilia Vargas, Von Ohlen Hall, Room 209
(630) 466-2964
cvargas@waubonsee.edu

Art Lab Assistant:
Esther Espino, Von Ohlen Hall, Room 240
(630) 466-5742
eespino@waubonsee.edu