A sculptor and painter, Adrian Nivola tackles a variety of themes, working from memory and driven by an effort to convey an enduring quality of light in ephemeral scenes. Seeking to transform color into light, in some works Nivola portrays the atmosphere of interiors where figures reside in solitude, part and parcel of the light they radiate. Similarly quiet, in delicately layered pastel landscapes Nivola articulates the vast, lambent expanse of valleys in Idaho, where the sublime scale of the Western American landscape becomes a foil for the sparse and unlikely structures of its inhabitants. The ephemeral light on the jerseys of horse jockeys which he studies at the Belmont Racetrack similarly engages Nivola’s eye and hand. The sumptuous palette and accent on costume recalls Degas’s pastels of the races. The resulting work, in paint and pastel, captures moments that feel resplendently timeless. With a lush impasto technique, his delicate dabs of pigment are tactile and luminous.
Nivola also explores the absurd disparity between aspirations and limitations within his artworks. From whimsical sculptures of unplayable musical instruments to the soft light encapsulated in his oil paintings and pastels, each of Nivola’s compositions express the beauty intrinsic to design that is separate from function. His work captivates the viewer, evoking reflection on the fickle relationship between the purpose of an object and its aesthetic value. From his paintings of carefully observed dead birds with one or more of their wings extended as if still capable of flight to his sculptures of unplayable musical instruments with their refined aesthetic machinery that fails to produce a sound, Nivola’s subjects often appear to have veered off course from fulfilling the function they promise. And yet their beauty, Nivola’s work suggests, may be in the detour.
Nivola, born in 1977, went to work for artist Caio Fonseca in Pietrasanta, Italy at the age of 18. He went on to study at Yale University, and received several prestigious awards before graduating in 2000, including the Ellen Batell Stoekel Fellowship. He later received a master’s degree in fine art from the New York Studio School, graduating in 2006. Adrian is the grandson of Ruth Guggenheim Nivola and Costantino Nivola, a celebrated Italian sculptor who was among the first wave of artists who settled on the East End of Long Island in the 1940s among other masters. Through the legacy of his grandparents, Nivola inherited a formative philosophy of life in art. The artist’s work is currently in numerous prestigious collections both in Europe and the U.S. Nivola has exhibited at the Yale University Art & Architecture Gallery, New Haven, CT; The Paul Dietrich Gallery in Boston, MA, The Painting Center, in NY; and The Drawing Room, in East Hampton, NY among others. Nivola lives and works in Brooklyn.