ALEX H NICHOLS

SHOCK whisper only marks Alex H Nichols’s return to painting after a decade dedicated to performance, video, installation, and writing. More than a shift in medium, this is a deeply personal act of reconnection with a version of self long abandoned, once silenced, and a form of expression buried.

 

Looking back, it was not painting that stopped, it was the life force that collapsed, a loss of the conviction and vitality that painting requires. This body of work is born from the slow resurfacing of that force.

 

Nichols describes the experience of “time folding like a paper napkin” — a collapsing of the distance between two points, of past and present. In the fold, the two touch; when it unfolds, decades of space appear between. The paintings hold this experience: distance, presence, reemergence, disappearance, and survival.

 

Each work begins with a sketch — a structural outline — then is layered with ochre, red, blue, and white. These layers are not meant to be seen, but to resemble what lives beneath the surface. Red speaks to blood, intensity, and pain while ochre references the earth and groundedness. Blue is the dream world, memory, and the safety of childhood. Blue emerges organically and dominates — a subconscious return to imagination as refuge. The figures in the paintings emerge, disappear, and reemerge, mirroring emotional and psychological healing. For Nichols, creating is a form of survival. 

 

SHOCK whisper only is an exploration of memory, trauma, and the quiet fierceness required to forgive, to survive, and to reemerge.