Nico Tovar American

Nicolas Tovar is a mixed media artist who graduated from the prestigious Slade School of Art and SAIC . Having lived in Chicago, London, and New York, his works epitomize an urban sensibility. Creating works on raw canvas, earthy tones emerge from months of unprecious use, the accumulation of accidental marks and residue from other components in the studio, as well as exhausted images and watercolors that occasionally coalesce to form a singular image among others. Tovar describes these works as sites of physical labor. Taking a non-fetishized approach to the material, the artist prioritizes charging the surface of the work with memory, labor, and moments of chance—marks made beyond his control.

This approach allows him to create work that, much like our fragmented cultural landscape, embodies a collapse of context, where certain floating signifiers appear clearer than others. Similar to the way memories function, there is an intuitive hierarchy in their sequencing. These sites of accumulation and erasure are understood by the artist more as constructions than paintings.

Through this process, photographs of everyday life are used and reused to the brink of recognition, engaging in a sort of digestion of life.