Nicolas Diehl

The majority of my work doesn’t concern itself with any particular subject matter, rather, when creating, ideas pop into my mind in a streamline of consciousness. I chose to focus on this disarray as a theme throughout my work. Often the ideas that I thought of had an element of humor within them. Those were my two main themes I stuck to when developing my work, some pieces are prevalent in either chaos or quirkiness, and many combine the two. In certain works, I incorporated text as a visual element, this functions to literally draw in the viewer, as it’s hard for people to not read words they see, automatically catching their attention with a visual trick.

I have looked into the work of Pablo Picasso as a key influence when composing my work. Specifically, his efforts during the Cubist movement. Taking lessons from how he deconstructed the figure and resurrected it into something different and still visually appealing, I attempted to recreate the process with my collages.

When first planning my exhibition, I wanted my audience to come into my show confused and overwhelmed with disarray, but able to take comfort in the visual appeal of my work, in order to reflect my theme of disorder. However, after developing my ideas further, I realized that due to the already chaotic nature of my work, curating a seemingly disorganized exhibition may inhibit the viewers’ ability to enjoy my art. As a result, I gathered my abstract work together, as I thought they visually fit in due to the use of the medium. I saw the variation of color and composition, size from piece to piece as the perfect way to bring my desired amount of uneasiness and disarray. With the correct amount of calculated chaos, I believe I was able to arrange both a visually and thematic cohesive show.