Nigel Cooke

Nigel Cooke makes paintings as if he were reanimating the dead. His canvases are Frankenstein-like concoctions of disparate styles, often integrating trompe l’oeil depictions of miniature, moss-covered rocks and withering trees with diagrammatic renderings of dilapidated buildings tattooed with graffiti. Despite the conspicuous metalanguage of Cooke’s art, his fictional landscapes also forcefully suggest absurd narratives. In the grandly scaled Ghost on the Happy Trail, 2003, cartoon brains and schematic birds are seen gallivanting among the detritus of empty lots, maudlin jack-o’-lanterns, and buried human heads in a postapocalyptic Halloween reverie. In the most recent work, Bad Buffet, 2006, a lone snail slithers over a banquet. Hidden behind a chalky haze, this ersatz still life is only slightly legible. A snow-laden winter landscape runs along the bottom edge of the painting, cleverly making the entire canvas also read as a bifurcated gray-and-white abstraction. Clearly, there is a ridiculous tone to these grotesqueries, but to his credit, the work is not limited to displays of surreal comedy. Instead, Cooke appears involved in an intellectual game—a reenactment of art history within the frame of our contemporary culture. What’s striking about Cooke’s art is the ease with which his disparate formal decisions are incorporated into a unified vision. Despite his attention to the artificial nature of making paintings (or perhaps because of it), one willingly accepts the outrageous protagonists Cooke depicts and the nearly depleted world they inhabit.