Jack Barrett is pleased to present Nature is the Best Techno, a solo show of paintings by New York-based artist, Nick Irzyk. In this exhibition, Irzyk continues to utilize the grid, a motif chosen for its reference to modernist painting. Mosaic-like cylinders and vortexes infinitely loop and oscillate against an undefinable space in which endless outcomes are possible. Painted as monolithic structures or infinite landscapes, the viewer is simultaneously positioned within and outside of the network.

Interested in the ways in which information is both visualized and disseminated, Irzyk often considers diagrams as an analogue to his paintings. As opposed to organizing and communicating abstract concepts into recognizable forms, Irzyk uses a visual language that sits parallel to the agenda of modernist painting, focusing on line, color and form as a means of expression. 

To create the framework of his paintings, Irzyk uses a mono-printing technique similar to carbon copying. This process allows for both controlled and chance marks, traces and blends of oil paint which are then completed with hand-applied brushwork. Each cell of the patchwork grid is treated as its own composition, symbolizing a part and the whole, much like each painting. The coloration of these new paintings is at once discordant and subdued. This is aided in part by the final technique in his process in which a single wash of color is applied, toning the entire work and further distinguishing the bold forms against flattened backdrops. 

If Irzyk’s previous works were architectural, these new paintings are closer to blueprints or propositions. The highly rendered quality of the work has shifted towards an embrace of abbreviation. The once aggressive compositional expansion of the grid is beginning to dissolve, made evident by a lack of resolve in the forms themselves, which at times unfurl into an abyss of color. The implication of the broken modernist grid is now blatant.