NICK FARHI

In a new body of work shown here for the first time, Farhi pays homage to New York City in the 1970s: a decade that saw the birth of the loft jazz scene in downtown Manhattan and with it, the emergence of dozens of DIY artistic venues for performing and visual arts. Enamoured by this moment of intense artistic creativity amidst precarity and excess, Farhi reimagines films set in the city in the period.

In them, he transforms mundane urban night scenes—a busy street crossing, a dark storefront, wet concrete, or a lonely corner—into dazzling feasts for the eyes. In them, vibrant raspberry reds, sapphire blues, mint greens, and bright purples dance on the surface, pulsating with life. The artist’s loose and energetic brushstrokes blend into and clash against one another like the notes of jazz emerging from an underground club. In The West Village Jazzmen, bursts of light, blurred neon signs, and watery marks create a visual cacophony. These contrasting perspectives—converging momentarily on the surface of a dirty puddle on the road—crystalise the improvisational nature of the genre.

Farhi’s paintings are electric, yet in them, the deafening sounds of construction, traffic, emergency services, and pedestrians in angry disputes with one another seem to dissipate. Despite containing the ferocity of New York City, these scenes are surprisingly serene, poetic. In them, time seems to elongate, allowing for contemplation and respite. A lone ballerina dances in a street corner; a shirtless man carries a box with puppies for sale; another admires spring blooms in a flower stand. In these cinematic compositions, the busy streets somehow convey openness and a sense of possibility.

Seen together, these works reveal a careful exploration of the memories contained within the lived environment. An ode to the layers of encounters experienced in any street corner across time. Farhi’s project, though tinged with nostalgia for a bygone era, rather celebrates the continued vibrancy of the city. As the artist expressed, “great energy never dies,” it only transforms​

—Carlota Ortiz Monasterio

A falling piano chord, an accordion of decommissioned pre-war sinks, still-lifes hung across the walls, a girl dancing in the rain while a Pacino-looking man adopts a puppy. This metamorphosis of subjects, contrasting weights of tropes and dim recollections of vintage New York cinema, center political fragility. The viewers are pulled through the offerings of individual stances; army green glasses versus a rainbow of stemware, a twitter-coloured bird juxtaposes with its prey a lonely green fish.

Temporality is the constant mechanism of waking life but is bound by rich landscapes of the New York-based artist’s critical imagination. Time is precious only because it is about to break, and life moves only because there are dwelling moments of still meditation to examine it.​

Film frames are constantly shuffled, sped across light at speeds to create the illusion of movement, whereas here, the oil paint moves across the canvas, outlasting captured memories.

​

—Sam Farhi