NISI ARIANA

I have painted since I could hold a brush. My Mother taught me about illusion when I was three by drawing and then putting a line behind what she had drawn on flat paper. Suddenly, a wonder-filled world appeared with a simple perspective technique.

I went to Stuyvesant and studied Creative Writing with Frank McCourt and Electronic Multitrack Music with Ken Jacobs, decided I wanted to be a painter at 15, and began taking weekend classes at The Cooper Union and The Metropolitan Museum.

I went to Fredonia and Chautauqua summer painting programs on scholarship and then attended Cooper Union. In senior year, I received a scholarship to study painting in Cortona, an hour from Florence.

I received a BFA in Fine Art Painting. My inspiration during this time was Titian, Caravaggio, Bonnard, Vuillard, Hans Holbein, Rembrandt, Max Beckmann, Philip Guston, and Kandinsky. I used to skip school and stand in front of Kandinsky’s triptych and look and listen for hours.

My painting and photography is an exploratory process of perceived and experienced nature in flow through interlocking rhythmic patterns in x, y, and z space. I often stumble into patterns by chance, random operations in a sequence of events lead from point to place to state, and from new alchemical relationships, grow new options and connections.

Thanks to pigment technical developments, there are water soluble oil paints, and bio sustainable acrylics and prepared canvas grounds. I get all supplies at Blick in NYC, including fabric paints. My photography is done with an iPhone and minimal Photoshop editing. I use Simply Framed for professional, artist-grade, archival printing and framing services.

NOTABLE EVENTS

ABSTRACT ETERNALIZE at the MoMA Sculpture Garden

ETERNAL BEACH at the MoMA

GROMMETS in 5.1 surround at the Berlinale 2015

NOTHING/MOVING: A MULTICELLULAR ORGANIGRAM in multichannel AV at Maya Stendhal Gallery

PROGRAMS, MULTICHANNEL INSTALLATIONS, FESTIVALS

Jeu De Paume Museum Paris, San Francisco Cinematheque, River to River Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Circulo de Bellas Artes Madrid, Maya Stendhal Gallery, SONAR festival at the Caracas Contemporary Art Museum, CalArts Film/Video Cinematheque, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Diapason Gallery, The Alejandro Otero Museum, National Cinématheque of Spain, Manchester Metropolitan University of England, International Biennial of Contemporary Art Venezuela, 9th Korea Experimental Arts Festival Seoul, Happy New Ears Festival Belgium, Q-02 Belgium, Ear to the Earth Festival, Judson Church, The Stone, SYNCH Electronic Festival, Phatory Gallery, Howl Film Festival