Nicholas Sistler: TORQUE

SoNa Chicago Contemporary Art features new works by Nicholas Sistler

TORQUE: Twisting, Turning, Spinning in Plane Space

Chicago artist Nicholas Sistler offers new twists on everyday space. 

The exhibition opens Friday, September 6, 2024, 6 - 9 pm, at SoNa Chicago Contemporary Art, 1527 N. Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL and continues through October 26, 2024. 

Artist Nicholas Sistler views the world differently than most, twisting the timeless and pondering the moments of stillness we pass through each day. Entering his world, we are delightfully prompted to consider our own. This painting exhibition showcases a fresh approach to Sistler’s representational work after a decade’s focus on abstraction. These newest pieces in his signature style demonstrate masterfully minute manipulations of stippled gouache, a modern updating of classic pointillism made famous by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. 

Sistler’s work is reminiscent of the surrealists who intuited society’s collective unconscious, allowing us to consider fantastic ways of seeing the often overlooked and unseen. The art in this exhibit invites viewers to explore not just the work’s physical space, but the viewer’s own psychological response to it.

Sister says his current work brings a spotlight on the everyday, turning it from the tediously mundane to the mindfully magnificent. TORQUE builds on this with an overlay of new spatial dimensions that challenge preconceived notions based on each viewer’s life experiences.

Inspired by Cezanne, Sistler describes a 3D world on a 2D surface, presenting traditional spaces in non-traditional ways. Some works, sparsely populated by objects, focus on what’s not there, the voids, rather than the worldly elements of a more standard still life. Each work joyfully creates a spatial game that engages the senses and compels the imagination. As with all of Sistler’s daringly diminutive works, their physical size surprisingly belies a world of objects and emotions that rewards careful viewers with unexpected revelations.

Nicholas Sistler is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has a background in painting and performance art. His works have appeared in more than 100 exhibitions including 24 solo shows and are part of the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, the Illinois State Museum, the Rockford Art Museum, Block Museum at Northwestern University, DePaul University Art Museum, Otterbein University, Benedictine University and numerous private collections coast to coast.

Join us for the Opening Reception on Friday, September 6 from 6-9 p.m. and attend Sistler’s Artist Talk on Saturday, October 5 at 2 p.m.

Image: Candle Holder, Gouache on paper, 4” x 4”