To run a mile, you’re probably going to lace up some good sneakers and, if you’re a competent runner, invest about 10 solid minutes of exercise. To write a mile the way Ken Nicol does is going to involve significantly more effort. In his new exhibition, Nicol is yet again demonstrating incredible feats of athletic penmanship. With the ironic mile the artist hearkens back to the phrase, “this is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time.” Nicol calculated that he could condense each phrase to about 2.93 inches of space when written in his meticulous, tiny script. Each panel in the mile contains 2400 of these sentences, the same number as there are minutes in a 40-hour work week. The irony is that it actually takes him a minute to write each phrase and consequently each of the 9 panels that compose the completed mile represents 40 hours of work; a far cry from ten minutes of pumping muscles and rubber tread meeting asphalt.
As so many of us wrestled with how to fill our COVID hours, Nicol made productive use of his by creating a new suite of drawings. Applying the same text as the “this is your life…” works, here he has composed a grid of 56 smaller drawings each representing one hour. The patterns shift and dance as each page is lengthened by one character in each new iteration, whiling away the erstwhile monotonous hours and days spent in various lockdowns.
Last year Nicol created a few drawings using blue ink as an exploratory alternative to his familiar black pens. Pleased with the results, he embarked on a quest to find a set of inks in the three primary colours that appealed to him for use in three new “completely fucked” drawings. His previous forays into colour (Nicol is not a self-professed colourist, in fact, he frequently professes to be a non-colourist) in which he used various multi-coloured pens, the ink colours were pre-determined by the pen manufacturer. In this series he wanted to make sure the inks would have the appropriate visual impact so he set about testing various brands. We get to follow Nicol’s progress on the hunt for a perfect yellow, red, and blue ink through the various other sets of coloured ink drawings featured in the exhibition. He tested 9 different brands in his search. Some of the inks required careful mixing with some black to achieve the desired resonance on the page, reflecting the obsessive precision and persistent evolution that we have come to expect from Nicol as he sources ways to elevate his concepts to the next level.
The Objects of Significance are a display of tools and remnants from the various processes involved in making Nicol’s work. The CURTA mechanical pocket calculator, a special collector’s relic known to connoisseurs as “the peppermill” or “the math grenade,” was used to calculate the number of squares of another of his Moleskine notebooks. The small bottle of graphite shavings, an innocuous reminder of the easily overlooked labour involved in simply maintaining the sharp point that enables Nicol to execute these precise and detailed drawings. The clock (interval timer), an ever-present theme in Nicol’s studio practice, is one that he always has nearby to keep track of his hourly progress in the studio; a tiny task-master ensuring that he does at least an hour of work on a least-loved task and then, no more than an hour on a favourite one. For Nicol, these objects are part of the narrative. Like evidence at a crime scene they help us, the investigators, piece together the story of how these artworks were made (executed?). Empty pens like spent shotgun shells mark the trail of a mind on the hunt for the next idea. These objects, part of the artist’s personal collection, are not for sale, but are necessary visual aids to comprehending the mind-bending efforts on exhibition.
Opening Reception
October 16, 2021 10:00 am – 6:00 pmArtist Links
Included Artworks
