Nicolas Grenier

Over the last eight years Nicolas Grenier's practice has evolved into an ecosystem that includes paintings, architectural installations, lecture-performances, and experimental economic models. In Dumbfounded Prophets, Grenier continues his ongoing exploration into the aesthetics of abstraction in relation to systems of power and its effects on the individual. Informed by his multidisciplinary approach, Grenier has integrated a meticulous crafting of color and pictorial space with a deft understanding of diagrammatic language sourced from architecture and design, management strategies, and theory. His new paintings relay concepts, experiences, and emotional states—in some instances presented within cryptic anecdotes and in combination with various strategies of organizing space—in order to communicate the complexities of mediated human experience. Grenier’s work also addresses the philosophical and moral dimensions inherent within political thought and action. He identifies moments when the attempts to control meaning through form expose ideological idiosyncrasies, revealing the honesty, absurdity, beauty, and pitfalls of rationalization and dogmatism. This idea is beautifully illustrated in a series of texts that circumscribe the margins of the painting Perspectives (2018) in which an unidentified narrator implores: 

DON'T GET SO ANGRY AT THEM, 
THEY'RE JUST CAUGHT UP IN A PERSPECTIVE THAT'S SO DIFFERENT FROM YOURS,
THEY DON'T SEE THE HARM THAT THEY'RE DOING.