ADAM NUDELMAN
Anything Just to Belong
NKN Gallery, Collins Place, 10 – 26 February, 2016.

Adam Nudelman, It’s a denial who would refuse, 2015, oil on linen, 141 x 250 cm

NKN Gallery of Melbourne & Nanda\Hobbs Contemporary is pleased to present a major exhibition by Australian artist Adam Nudelman, featuring a selection of sublime new paintings.

With an artistic career spanning 25 years, Nudelman has exhibited widely and his works feature in prominent private, corporate and public collections. He has maintained a continuous practice as a studio artist since graduating in Fine Arts from Victorian College of the Arts in 1992. Anything Just to Belong is Nudelman’s 25^th solo exhibition and first exhibition at NKN Gallery in Melbourne.

Nudelman’s personal connection to historical European painting techniques and modes of expression has long been an important factor in his work, and is richly expressed in this new exhibition. The artist lives and works from his studio in the hills above Foster in South Gippsland, Victoria, where he paints full-time. For him, the landforms, low grey skies, pockets of dense, dark forest and intense weather of South Gippsland provide a physical and psychological link to the European landscape and experience. These influences can be detected in both the aesthetics and subject of this new series of finely detailed oil paintings, that oscillate between the brooding, dense darkness of forest interiors, and the big skies and vast open spaces for which his work is well known. While these works are undeniably romantic, revealing natures most captivating secrets, they are rendered with the cool breed of refined realism that Nudelman has steadily developed over two decades while depicting Australia’s varied terrain.

Adam Nudelman, After all I still believe it, 2015, oil on linen, 152 x 125 cm

Nudelman’s work also contains a subtle discourse surrounding displacement and cultural identity, a timely reflection given the prevalent humanitarian issues affecting Australian and global society.

For Nudelman, the landscape acts as a vehicle for his quest to understand his place in this world. The grandson of Polish Jewish immigrants, Nudelman’s connection to his homeland was shrouded in secrecy, and the unspoken histories of people who suffered cataclysmic trauma. As his heritage began to unfold, his path to express his sense of belonging manifested itself through paint.

Adam Nudelman, Whose needs do we serve, 2015, oil on linen, 112 x 168 cm

In this exhibition titled Anything Just to Belong, the physical environment and natural world becomes embedded with psychological and emotional layers, such as the idea of a homeland and a sense of disconnection, and isolation. Yet despite the palpable melancholy that exists in many works, an evocation of hope is always present in the beauty Nudelman draws out from the Australian wilderness. In this way Nudelman’s deep empathy for the plight of displaced people is subtly evoked in these works that reflect his own journey of identity, and the universal hope for a better future.

Adam Nudelman, No paradise found, 2015, oil on linen, 120 x 91.5 cm

Vincent Alessi, Former Artistic Director of La Trobe University Museum of Art, Melbourne, writes of Nudelman, “Adam Nudelman is an artist firmly entrenched in the past: classical in technique, aware of the science and rules of composition and fascinated by the sublime like Turner, Constable and Ruisdael before him. However, he is very much an artist of today: aware of contemporary discourse, engaged with the psychology possible in picture making and constantly looking for ways to rediscover, rearticulate and represent the world in which we live.”

A full catalogue will be available at the exhibition.

Enquires please contact:

NKN GALLERY
Collins Place,
(via Sofitel Melbourne on Collins)
Melbourne 3000

In association with

Nanda/Hobbs Contemporary
Level 1, 66 King St
Sydney

Adam Nudelman, The darkness only lasts a night-time, 2015, oil on linen, 152.5 x 366 cm

Adam Nudelman, If it all should fall tomorrow, 2015, oil on linen, 120 x 96.5cm

Adam Nudelman, Last to know, 2016, oil on panel, 27.5 x 22.8 cm