Modern Painters Introducing Nicolas Lobo
“It’s a heavily diluted broth the human body soaks in for leisure,” says Nicolas Lobo of muriatic acid, a common swimming pool cleaner that he will use to scar the concrete walls of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) for “Leisure Pit,” an exhibition opening April 16. “But if it were any more concentrated, it would dissolve that human body instantly.” This is not the first time the Miami-based artist has made art using a household chemical. Over the years he has used homemade napalm, clouds of Robitussin sprayed from a fire extinguisher, bootleg perfume, and expired energy drinks with purported aphrodisiac qualities. This is a man who once made soy sauce out of his own hair.
Lobo keeps a studio in Miami’s little River neighborhood not far from the home and jungled garden he shares with his partner, Muriel, an organic farmer, and their toddler, Bimini. Raised in the city’s southern suburbs, he returned to Miami after graduating from Cooper Union in New York and spending a year in San Francisco. “I’m here because I can make my best work here,” Lobo says. “It’s a city with an expiration date, it’s a new city that has grown way too fast for its own good.”