BAJA BLAST
Nick Schleicher
Houska Gallery
St. Louis, MO
May 17th - July 5th 2024
Nick Schleicher presents BAJA BLAST, an exhibition of new paintings that trace the vulnerability of healing through uncertainty. Ultra-vibrant shaped canvases merge and conjoin, undulating across walls and dancing through space. Wobbly edges and rhythmic movement reject the clinical austerity of minimalism in favor of an unabashed, imperfect humanness. The dynamic surfaces, layered with paint, embrace the sense of fun arising from a life filled with love.
The distinctive color palette of BAJA BLAST (teals, limes, pinks, tangerines, jewel-toned purples, etc.) celebrates the months leading up to Schleicher’s wedding and honeymoon in Baja Sur. It is also the continuation of CLOUD WAVE, Schleicher’s first international solo exhibition in Seoul, South Korea, where he emphasized color as a distillation of time. Like an eyedropper, each painting encapsulates a particular tonal range, preserving scared and ephemeral moments to be revisited.
Schleicher’s practice has evolved, using the painting process as fertile ground for self-discovery. BAJA BLAST champions love as a catalyst for maturation and how our ever-present voids morph with connection. First emerging as subconscious markers of grief, the shaped canvases functioned as physical embodiments of spaces held. Tombstones and wobbly circles formed portals manifest from loss, from which we might find a connection in blankness. BAJA BLAST incorporates new forms; many doubled - even tripled. These new works hold the memory of what was lost - they have not forgotten their old shapes - but in coming together, they unabashedly celebrate the life that now springs from their vibrant depths.
Co-written by Nick Schleicher and Marina May Schleicher