Nick Fudge (born 12 August 1961), also known as Nicholas Fudge (Chinese: 尼克•福吉), is a British painter, sculptor, and digital artist. Fudge studied at

Goldsmiths College Goldsmiths, University of London, formerly Goldsmiths College, University of London, is a Member institutions of the University of London, constituent research university of the University of London. It was originally founded in 1891 as The G ...

, London, as a member of the

Young British Artists The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Golds ...

(YBA) generation alongside

Damien Hirst Damien Steven Hirst (; né Brennan; born 7 June 1965) is an English artist and art collector. He was one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest ...

Sarah Lucas Sarah Lucas (born 1962) is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged in 1988. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour by incorporating photography, sculpture, collage and found object ...

Liam Gillick Liam Gillick (born 1964) is a British artist. In the 1990s he was one of the informal Young British Artists group; like many of them, he took a degree in fine art from Goldsmiths' College, in London. He was among the artists included in the ...

Gary Hume Gary Stewart Hume (born 9 May 1962) is an English artist. Hume's work is strongly identified with the YBA who came to prominence in the early 1990s. Hume lives and works in London and Accord, New York.

, and

Michael Landy Michael Landy (born 1963) is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). He is best known for the performance piece installation '' Break Down'' (2001), in which he destroyed all his possessions, and for the ''Art Bin'' project (2010) at the ...

. His tutors

Michael Craig-Martin Sir Michael Craig-Martin (born 28 August 1941) is an Irish-born contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is known for fostering and adopting the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artwork, '' An Oak ...

and Jon Thompson expected comparable success until he destroyed all his artwork before his graduate show in 1988 and disappeared from the art world for twenty-five years. In 2016, ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' arts correspondent Jack Malvern dubbed him "The Lost YBA" upon his return.

Education and influences

Fudge attended

Christ's College, Finchley Christ's College is a secondary school with academy status in East Finchley, London, United Kingdom. It falls under the London Borough of Barnet Local Education Authority for admissions. Since September 2018, Christ’s College Finchley has off ...

(1972–1977) alongside writer

Will Self William Woodard Self (born 26 September 1961) is an English writer, journalist, political commentator and broadcaster. He has written 11 novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and nine collections of non-fiction writing. Se ...

, leaving at sixteen to study

graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art that involves creating visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of ...

at Barnet College. After graduating from Goldsmiths, he moved to the United States with poet Tracy Angel, earning an MFA from

Tyler School of Art The Tyler School of Art and Architecture is part of Temple University, a large, urban, public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Tyler currently enrolls about 1,350 undergraduate students and about 200 graduate st ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

. A formative road trip through the

American West The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is census regions United States Census Bureau As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the mea ...

became "a kind of rebirth". His influences include

Modernists Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and social issues were all aspects of this moveme ...

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

Francis Picabia Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, writer, filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet, and typography, typographist closely associated with Dada. When consid ...

, and

Jasper Johns Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker. Considered a central figure in the development of American postwar art, he has been variously associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and ...

; writers

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...

and

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

; and digital technology.

Work

During his self-imposed exile (1988–2016), Fudge created paintings and digital works in secret, sharing them only with a close circle.

Painting and sculpture

Fudge's

oil paintings Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or copper for several centuries. ...

reinterpret

Cubist Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

and

Abstract Expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

works to interrogate painting's role in the digital age. His sculptures include "Old Masters Soaps" (

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...

sketches on soap bars) and "Picasso Drive", a crushed

Citroën C4 Picasso The Citroën C4 SpaceTourer (formerly the Citroën C4 Picasso), also spelled Citroen C4 SpaceTourer in some other languages (formerly the Citroen C4 Picasso), is a five-seater car produced by French manufacturer Citroën with a seven-seater versi ...

installed at Hastings' Observer Building.

Digital art

In the early 1990s, Fudge began creating digital works after finding a Macintosh Classic II in a

thrift store A charity shop is a retail establishment run by a charitable organization to raise money. Charity shops are a type of social enterprise. They sell mainly used goods such as clothing, books, music albums, shoes, toys, and furniture donated by ...

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

. He taught himself

graphics software In computer graphics, graphics software refers to a program or collection of programs that enable a person to manipulate images or models visually on a computer. Computer graphics can be classified into two distinct categories: raster graphics ...

on the machine, which he shared with Angel for her poetry. His digital oeuvre remains stored on obsolete

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

hard drives A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

, largely inaccessible today. The

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

-based critic An Paenhuysen described these works as "post-internet... simultaneously dated and futuristic... modern,

postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...

, and post-postmodern". A 2019 review noted: "Nick Fudge does a masterful digital reproduction. The Berlin artist lives out his penchant for Pablo Picasso, computers, painting and postmodernism on the laptop and with a brush. His painted pictures could just as well have been created on the computer. Only the intense gaze leads the viewer to Fudge's independently modernized Cubism. Fudge is the only exhibitor to establish the connection between PC and painting. He consistently follows tradition and logic, shows freedom of thought and creativity." In 2023, he joined

Sedition Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech or organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, establ ...

, releasing collections like ''Picasso Pizazz'' (2024), which reworks Picasso's paintings through digital vectors.

Exhibitions

Solo

* 2024: ''Picasso Pizazz'', Sedition Art (online) * 2024: ''PataPaint'', Lop Nor Desert, China (curated by Zhou Yi 周翊) * 2023: ''Destruction of Appearance'', Sedition Art * 2018: ''Undo Redo Return'', HSBC HQ, London * 2016: ''Reality Drive: Escape Velocity'', Fitzrovia Gallery, London * 2016: ''Reality Drive'', Observer Arts, Hastings * 1994: ''Materials for Nothing'', Temple Art Gallery, Philadelphia (MFA thesis)

Group

* 2024: ''Semi-Manual Era'', Gravity Art Museum, Beijing (curated by Zhou Yi 周翊) * 2024: ''Apollo's Decathlon'',

Château de Montsoreau The Château de Montsoreau is a Flamboyant Gothic castle in the Loire Valley, directly built in the Loire riverbed. It is located in the market town of Montsoreau, in the Maine-et-Loire ''Departments of France, département'' of France, close ...

, France * 2024: ''Future Paint'', Kelly-McKenna Gallery, USA (co-curated by Fudge) * 2021: ''Digital Divide II''
Hilbert Raum
Berlin * 2019: ''Digital Divide'', Kunstverein Speyer, Germany * 1992: ''Fifth Anniversary Exhibition'',

Karsten Schubert Karsten Schubert (12 August 1961 – 30 July 2019) was a German art dealer and publisher working in London. Career Before opening his own gallery, Schubert worked at the Lisson Gallery. Karsten Schubert London Schubert ran Karsten Schubert Lon ...

, London (curated by

)

Publications

* Pan, Lara (2024)
"Future Paint: Nick Fudge's Emergence from the Underground"
''White Hot Magazine''. * Alimpiev, Vladislav (2024)
"Reframing Modernism in the Digital Age"
''Sedition Art Magazine''.

References

External links

*
Nick Fudge
at Sedition Art
"Susie Hamilton in Conversation with Nick Fudge"
''Turps Banana'' (Issue 18, 2017) {{DEFAULTSORT:Fudge, Nick 1961 births 20th-century English painters Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London British digital artists English contemporary artists Living people Young British Artists