A series of works from 2016 document his neighborhood, replicating buildings and businesses he frequents within four blocks of his New York apartment. Made out of foam, paper, glue, and paint, these miniaturized buildings (a bank, a bar, a Laundromat, and the Rite Aid building where Buffon shops) impart a tenderness and a nostalgia that outsizes their diminutive scale. Like works by other artists who recreate objects or elements from their everyday life, Buffon’s storefronts are perfectly imperfect, the wobbled lines reiterating their handmade quality. Capturing these mundane structures in faithful detail, Buffon aims to capture a moment and a place; his final objects reinforce, however, that both space and time are ever changing.
Working in paint, performance, and small, diorama-like wall sculptures, Seattle transplant Nicholas Buffon responds to his context through intimate gestures, examinations, and recreations. While his performances deal with layers of time—the present, historical time, deep time, etc.—his idiosyncratic sculptural works capture, in rapt detail, the concrete world around him.
Del Cielo - Photographs by Jo Ann Callis, Masahisa Fukase, James Gallagher, Graciela Iturbide, Rinko Kawauchi and James Gallagher | Exhibition review by Sophie Wright | LensCulture Feature Del Cielo This group exhibition explores the age-old symbol of the bird, gathering together the work of five photographers who each explore this shared winged subject matter in their own distinct visual language...