Nick Doyle Subverts American Consumerism in "Ruin"

Nick Doyle is making his Paris debut in a new exhibition titled “Ruin” after exhibiting his most recent body of work, “Everything is Fine,” at Perrotin Seoul.

The California-born, New York-based artist surveys the iconography of American consumerism in an act of subversion that reflects the washed-out materialistic society from which they originate at the gallery’s Parisian outpost. “Doyle depicts the agonies and impasses of a society in ruins,” wrote Mathieu Buard, a professor and critic, adding, “where forsaken artifacts and décor coexist in a mercantile prosody.” His works are parodies of advertising signs, targets, and shooters.”

A broken pencil, a stained shirt, and gallons upon gallons of milk are just a few of the banal scenes woven into Doyle’s signature pastiche, denim, another symbolic material that he refers to in his references to American manifest destiny. Doyle has previously stated that this investigation is always rooted in “what it means to be an American.” A quest inexorably tied to consumer culture, that leaves the artist in “shame.”