TYLER EASH: LOREUM

4 Nov 2020-6 Feb 2021

Overview

In his first solo exhibition at NICOLETTI, London, Tyler Eash registers and redistributes fragments of Loreum’s existence in a new series of paintings, drawings, sculptures and film. They tell the story of a being born of the sea foam, of a self-mythologized entity embracing dissonance (of class, gender, sexuality and self) as a means to erode uncomfortable truths and upturn reality – that of an American dream gone awry. Throughout the exhibition, recurring motifs and symbols such as horses, car engines, windshields, motorcycle handlebars, corn fields and meth pipes point to the reality experienced by an increasingly marginalised working class struggling with poverty, incarceration, homelessness and addiction. Alluding to Loreum’s background and early life, elements characteristics of a certain Americana aesthetics are nevertheless filtered through a queering lens to shift reality through a self-aware theatricality, whereby Eash fictionalizes his past, examines the present, and fantasizes the future.