Giddily Toward Oblivion: Gladys Nilsson Paints the Human Comedy

Jeremy Lybarger, Art Forum, July 7, 2026

The first thing you notice in Gladys Nilsson’s work is the people. Or are they animals? Mutants, maybe. They crowd nearly every inch of the frame, a hopped-up parade of oversize carousers and their miniature consorts. Everyone is bulbous, stringy, or malformed. Flesh has gone dermatologically haywire. There are snouts where you’d expect noses. Gender is often ambiguous—or beside the point—with getups ranging from church lady to dance-hall tart to BDSM munchkin. Occasionally, in the thick of it all, penises lurk with modest ambition. Coming upon one of her paintings is like plunging into a party full of strangers already three drinks deep.

Nilsson admits to suffering from horror vacui—a fear of empty space, which in her case reads less like a neurotic affliction than like compulsive conviviality. When she’s contemplating a work in progress, she takes the bus from her suburban Chicago home to a nearby mall to people-watch. She has described herself as a collector of gestures and postures, which she then adapts into her figures’ sinuous contortions (helped by tentacular limbs and sideways pelvises). Fittingly, Nilsson also draws inspiration from Sears, that temple of middle-class retail, whose catalogues she counts as among her formative influences.