Nicole Eisenman was born in 1965 in Verdun, France. Her father, a US Army psychiatrist, and her mother, an urban planner, moved the family to Scarsdale, New York in 1970. Eisenman received her BA in Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1987. During her studies at RISD, Eisenman spent a formative year in Rome, where she became enamoured with Renaissance painting. After graduating, Eisenman moved to Manhattan's Lower East Side and began exploring a range of mediums, experimenting with painting, printing, sculpture, installation, and video.
Read MoreEven in her earliest works, Eisenman revealed a dark sense of humour, a deep appreciation for the history of Western art, and strong opinions on popular culture. In the early 1990s, Eisenman was encouraged by Ann Philbin, then the director of the Drawing Center, New York, to work on expressing her own point of view and experiences. Eisenman dug deeper into ink drawings, works on paper, collages, and paintings that explored female-centric tropes in comics, art history, and pornography. In 1995, Eisenman participated in the Whitney Biennial and contributed Self-Portrait With Exploded Whitney, a colossal mural that depicted herself at the centre, painting on the surface of the only remaining wall of a collapsed Breuer building as men fled the scene.While her paintings spotlight issues of gender, race, economic imbalance, and gun violence, she rejects being categorised as a political activist, stating 'I couldn't draw a line around a group of people and claim to have a voice for anyone other than myself.'1 Eisenman identifies as 'gender-fluid,' but uses the 'she' pronoun, to show that just like her art, a single identity is not possible and comes with its own complications. Drawing from her daily experiences as an artist in New York City, Eisenman is most interested in accessible narratives that others can relate to, including such broad themes as eternal dread of the future and the dangers lurking within our dependence upon technology.
The human figures populating Eisenman's work take on unexpected shades of yellow, green, and orange. Some paintings depict singular or coupled figures, as in The Work of Labor and Care (2004), with its two yellow figures parsing a rich brown mound that suggests faecal matter. In Eisenman's sprawling mural-like works, scenes are crowded with people at all levels of the picture plane, depicted in a myriad of styles. For example, in Biergarten at Night, (2007) each figure has its own palette and texture. Despite being together in proximity on the surface, the people in this work avoid eye contact and appear emotionally isolated. Eisenman finds great interest in the late-night gatherings at Biergartens in New York City and Brooklyn. Biergartens are part of an overarching theme in Eisenman's work, in which figures are constantly searching for community. Eisenman creates expressionistic portraits of imagined characters, genderless figures, friends, and even herself. Whether in a group or alone, Eisenman's figures are isolated and brooding, products of our time and a reflection on our society.
1 Nicole Eisenman quoted in Peter Schjeldahl, 'Seriously Funny.' The New Yorker, New York NY, 9 May 2016.
Text courtesy Hauser & Wirth.