niki.b

Polish painter niki.b melds comic book presentations, Americana's muscle cars and Japanese manga into a unique post-pop style. Her self-conscious scenes' textures are smooth as 1950's American soda commercials, but their stunning shading and textures create intense impressions of three-dimensionality. niki.b's stylized aesthetic makes the particular pop-cultural, and vice-versa. Pensive animals, reflective friends and vintage Cadillacs' classic lines become iconic and personalized in popping colors and plastic forms.

Initially this arresting graphic style seems especially striking given niki.b's Polish origins. Then again, as she explains, living through the final, dreary years of communism gave her a particularly discerning and generous eye for bright colors, pleasurable forms, knowing humor and irony. Beyond the ponderous thoughts of her subjects, niki.b's work is most remarkable for the sheer visual pleasure it provokes. Faced with one of her portraits, animals or cars, one simultaneously wants to enter their comic book world and expect their minutely formed shapes to leap from the canvas. Either way, her work is engaging.