![\"Nick](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/42.jpg\")
Nick Fudge, FDP V.2.0_DES01009_2, Dimension: W 58.2cm x H 41.1cm, Direct print to dibond, 1994 – 2015, Photo: Simon Gales<\/p>\n Nick Fudge, FDP V.2.0_DES01009_2, Dimension: W 58.2cm x H 41.1cm, Direct print to dibond, 1994 – 2015, Photo: Simon Gales<\/p>\n
Upon receiving artist Nick Fudge\u2019s invitation to his exhibition in Hastings, Berlin curator An Paenhuysen<\/a> was dubious. But despite this English coastal town not being on the art map (yet), the curator took up the challenge. There, she discovered the new unlikely refuge for London artists, and even found time to share a pint with bad-ass YBAs.<\/b><\/p>\n Islands are always a little odd, aren\u2019t they? As I arrived at London Gatwick I looked for the exit, only to realise that in this neck of the woods it\u2019s called \u201cway out\u201d. The artist Nick Fudge was the one who made me cross the channel, and I\u2019d introduce him as a post-internet artist, but, curiously enough, he was already thinking about the moment after the internet as early as the 1990s. Do you remember that time when sitting behind a computer made you feel excited, or even, it blew your mind? So, I could call Fudge avant-garde but the term seems to suggest he\u2019s always busy running ahead of times. I happen to know that Fudge doesn\u2019t run and prefers above all a duchamp-esque delay, which was the first thing we talked about when he picked me up at the rail station in Hastings. No, the train wasn\u2019t late, but I was still feeling touched by the Agnes Martin show at the Tate Modern: her lines bringing about a halt in my mind, a suspension of movement. \u201cDelayed reaction,\u201d Fudge said with a nod.<\/p>\n To delay something involves a certain escape, and like Marcel Duchamp, Fudge is the ultimate escape artist. I came to Hastings for the opening of the artist\u2019s show at the Observer Building – his second exhibition since leaving Goldsmiths at the end of the 1980s. Indeed, some of his art school contemporaries went on to became YBA art stars; Nick Fudge, however, chose anonymity. It was right before Fudge was about to finish college and enter the art market, that he decided to go underground. Apparently he wasn\u2019t too eager to play along with the entertain us!<\/i> ambiance of the 1990s. It was, nonetheless, in the YBA context that I met the artist for the first time. Not in the 1990s (I was only half conscious back then) but in 2015 at the opening of the British Pavilion in Venice – where Fudge\u2019s bad-ass friend Sarah Lucas provided an amazing show, a blast of custard yellow. \u201cSupportive anyway?\u201d I asked the underground artist. Fudge laughed, and only a few months later he invited me to see his very own resurrection in an exhibition entitled \u201cObscured by Clouds\u201d, displaying Fudge\u2019s work alongside Phil King\u2019s paintings.<\/p>\n Fudge reckoned that I came to his exhibition for the sole reason of meeting Sarah Lucas in person. \u201cShe\u2019s a fan,\u201d he told her upon introducing me. And I won\u2019t deny that I couldn\u2019t believe my luck when sitting opposite to Lucas at the pub after the opening (if only her London accent wouldn\u2019t have thrown me so off track). But besides being starstruck, the very reason why I\u2019d come to Hastings, was that I was curious to see what a delay in exposure in Nick Fudge\u2019s quick mind had brought about. The first visible expression of this delay are the dates in the titles: 1994-2015 for the prints, less years for the paintings, but all in all, quite a time span to go about. The years, however, didn\u2019t result in an oeuvre that has an overdone look. Rather a development in consistency seems to have taken place, one that\u2019s not so easy to get your head around. In the 1990s Fudge started off by thinking about the Internet in a 2010s post-internet kind of way. But in the 2010s this same work is also an exploration of the media archeology of the 1990s.<\/p>\n Simply put, Fudge never updated his computer programs. I don\u2019t know how he did it; the flashing sign of updates alone makes me feel nervous. Fudge\u2019s working material is the now obsolete technology of the 1990s. Let\u2019s take as an example his \u201cMachine of Connectivity and Undo\u201d, printed to Dibond aluminium, dated 1994-2015. It is post-internet in the way that it uses the tools of the Web to create an object that in the end exists in the real world. The long incubation period of the work (1994-2015) refers to (and let me quote the artist because digital materialism is a thing on its own): \u201cAn (editable) digital image (file) shows no trace of work over a period of time (excepting the file’s meta data ie, graphical icon etc.)\u201d Fudge\u2019s \u201cMachine of Connectivity and Undo\u201d also makes clear why his art work never gives the impression of being overdone. Fudge prefers to push the \u201cundo\u201d button. Yet not to the point of total annihilation. A digital deconstruction comes about. In this case, so the artist explained to me, \u201ca cubist version of an Apple Newton, the first personal handheld assistant device dating from the mid 1990s.\u201d As such, Fudge\u2019s prints are simultaneously dated and futuristic. They are modern, postmodern and post-postmodern, all in one; or \u201cmeta-modern\u201d as the artist pointed out.<\/p>\n My favorite work in the show was a greyscale, metallic-colour print titled \u201cFDP V.2.0_DES01009_2\u201d. It somehow reminded me of the early glamour of the silver screen, displaying a computer desktop. The desktop shows us a moment in editing, I\u2019m guessing it\u2019s Adobe Illustrator v.8.0.1, a program that Fudge seems to be working with. Standing next to me in the show was media archaeologist Alex Casper Cline and he was so kind to enlighten me about codes, barcodes, QR codes, data, the configuration of pixels, a video game called \u201cGeoGuessr\u201d, and the material culture of digital economy. Meanwhile the computer language on \u201cFDP V.2.0_DES01009_2\u201d started to reveal its beauty: Tool Box, Brush Size, Colour Palette, Brush Behaviour, Brush Stroke Designer, Pixels. I\u2019d never considered it before, but isn\u2019t there poetry to be found in Multiple Bristles, New Brush Model, Spread Bristles, and Edge Bristle Soften? Yes, even Trash and Save seems to make things swing. That\u2019s how I discovered that \u201cFDP V.2.0_DES01009_2\u201d is like a Kurt Schwitters poem of the 21st centu Whereas Fudge materialises digital images as prints (although, if he delays, they stay rested in a file, never reaching the point of output), he does the opposite with paintings. He makes them immaterial. Fudge\u2019s painting are like an augmented reality platform, its visual and discursive cues are better detected by looking at it through your smartphone. But also if you lay your eyes upon the canvas, Fudge\u2019s paintings tend to fluctuate in and out. At moments, they even meld with the surroundings of the Observer Building, whose walls are layered and graffitied, which might distract some artists but it actually makes Fudge feel elated. Those walls are \u201ca visual history of undo\/redo,\u201d he told me, \u201ca kind of contextual deconstruction of (gallery) space.\u201d<\/p>\n Text by An Paenhuysen<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cObscured By Clouds\u201d with Phil King and Nick Fudge is on show at Observer Arts until 11 October 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n Mehr: \u2018Welcome to the Jungle\u2019 at KW \u2013 a Rewarding Experience<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Nick](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/31.jpg\")
Nick Fudge, File_Version 1, 2014 – 2015. Absente, 2014 – 2015. Pernod, 2014 – 2015. File_Version 2, 2014 – 2015. Photo by Simon Gales<\/p>\n![\"Nick](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/21.jpg\")
Nick Fudge, Machine of Connectivity and Undo_OB_!<\/p>\n![\"Nick](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/No-3.jpg\")
Nick Fudge, Ivory Spring Gesso, Dimensions: W 57.8cm x H 82.6cm,
Direct print to 16mm Honeycomb Board with edging tape, 1994 – 2015, Photo: Simon Gales<\/p>\n![\"Nick](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/61.jpg\")
Nick Fudge, Cloud Drive Dimensions: W 265cm x H 86.5cm, Oil on Canvas, 2011 – 2015, Photo: Simon Gales<\/p>\n
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Nick Fudge, FDP V.2.0_DES01009_2; PM_BBW_OB_2<\/p>\n