Thanks to Nick for stopping by TheBoldWay!
Nick Doyle is an American artist whose primary material is denim, which he cuts, bleaches, and assembles like contemporary marquetry. Represented worldwide by Perrotin gallery, he made a splash with Human Resources, a "corporate" kink bar premiered at Perrotin Paris, which returns this June at Basel Social Club. He's joining us for his new show at Perrotin New York, running April 24 through May 30, where he unveils Oracle Ava 113 — an AI avatar offering psychic readings to visitors, alongside a new series of batik-treated landscapes.
Through denim, Nick unpacks America's foundational myths: rugged masculinity, the dream of Western expansion, and the slave-owning past that the textile industry has so carefully erased. A clear-eyed, unvarnished conversation about what it means, today, to be American.
Timeline
02:30 — The name and the calling: why Matthew renamed himself Nick at six (after the TV show Nickelodeon), and why he knew at seven or eight he'd be an artist
09:00 — Roots and Los Angeles: a Republican lawyer-musician father, a Democrat screenwriter-mime mother, the family "Nietzsche consensus," and how Hollywood's mediated reality shaped his sense of American identity
14:00 — New York, 2006: arriving at 26, turning down the unpaid Murakami internship for a $12/hour job, and seven years inside Tom Sachs's studio learning sculpture from the shop floor
24:00 — The art world and self-confidence: there is no destination, the artist generates their own reality, the mirror exercise ("Hey buddy, I love you" every morning for six months), and learning to be kind to himself
30:45 — Human Resources: the corporate kink bar at Perrotin Paris, owning his personal shame, and confronting his family's Deep South slave-owning past that no one ever talked about
43:00 — The desert crossing: broke at 35 and ready to quit, his girlfriend's six-month ultimatum, and the sold-out 2019 shows at Steve Turner Gallery and 56 Henry that changed everything
51:00 — The denim breakthrough: pulling a roll of denim out of a dumpster as Trump first ran for office, the studio visit in Brooklyn — hand-cutting, bleaching, batik, and the puzzle-like marquetry of his collages
1:02:00 — Living in America right now: why New York is still worth the cost (community, real face-to-face exchange), and the fractured image of a country "held hostage" by isolationism and polarisation
1:09:00 — The work's core themes: nostalgia as a depressive filter, the myth of the American West, trapped masculinity, and denim as the fabric of America's contradictions (indigo, cotton, slavery, and the cowboy myth)
1:25:00 — Creative process and "slow thinking": Dave Hickey's "you can make at least 10 of a good idea," advice to his younger self ("be kinder to yourself, let go"), and the unveiling of Oracle Ava 113 at Perrotin New York (April 24 – May 30)
Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
