Blank Media Collective

Biography / Personal Statement

Andy Nizinskyj’s work surrounds the notion of inertia and conflict, and exists solely as a method of existential healing and redemption.

In a contradictory manner, Nizinskyj is fascinated by a personal lack of interest and passion, and the phenomena which perpetuate these traits. His sculptures and video are manifestations of these conflicts, serving both as displays of frustration, the clash of cultivation and self-indulgence, and the noticeably overused and banal that is born of disengagement. In the piece Ghost, Nizinskyj provides an enormous sculpture of the Disney icon Mickey Mouse shown in a charicatured vulnerability through its deformation, more inclined to Disney rivals Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes. The presence of disney’s figure head is scarcely used today in the company’s actual productions and entertainment and the sculpture’s pale colouring suggests this absence and of a perpetuating deadness and void through overuse. 

Nizinskyj seeks to chronicle the fear of losing the self to reality, and the measures taken in its preservation through the comfortable shelter of habitual and ritualistic routine; whilst Ghost is born of such frustrations they are not fully realized until Mouse Piece 2 - Removal of Thought in which an excruciatingly long sequence of video depicts the artist constructing a similar Mouse made from a polystyrene block which is identical to that used for the original piece. Showing signs of frustration and hesitation the artist eventually finds that through his own habitual inertia and directionless both in his practice and being, he has carved the block to nothingness and is left with the void. His refusal to proceed leads to his demise, as with the icon’s creative fate.

Pop cultural icons are further expanded upon in One Suave Fucker (after David Lynch) in a less overt manner. The nauseous video piece is painful to watch as a strobe light continuously flickers and yet the dancing figure (the artist) miming to the dreamy Roy Orbison record barely bats an eyelid, oblivious to it. The piece is a re-enactment of the brothel scene of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet in which its proprietor amuses a small group of deranged, murderous drug users with a naive display of believed sophistication and refinement. The strobe not only fragments the frames so that his actions are placed in snapshot, allowing the viewer to pay particular attention to his inner conflicts with culture and decadence, but it represents his automating perseverance to show stoicism through the ordeal - automatic inauthenticity in motion.

Decadence is again visited in Untitled (Hoops) and Golden Shower (Beautiful Hide-Away) in which the two contrasting objects provide their own take upon lavishness, disgust and enthrallemnt. The two basketball nets possess a meticulously smooth and viscous shine embedded with the Fleur de Lis, an icon associated with Luis XIV and decadent extravagance whilst the two shimmering curtains offer the cheap sparkle found in working men’s clubs. Both pieces offer a particular beauty and association with leisure yet manage to disgust the viewer at the same time; one through its cheapness, and the other through its sickeningly luxurious viscosity and their clinically ritualistic modernity. The hoops represent an ironic pinnacle of human achievement through human biology, civilisation and commerce whilst the showers depict the bottom of society's barrel.