Denim Dreams and Digital Deception: Nick Doyle Takes on the American Myth in ‘Collective Hallucinations’
On view at Perrotin New York until the end of the month.
Summary
- Perrotin New York presents Collective Hallucinations through May 30, 2026, featuring Nick Doyle’s large-scale denim collages
- The exhibition critiques Americana and the “American Dream” through symbols like aviators and AI-powered data mining
Perrotin New York is currently presenting Collective Hallucinations, a solo exhibition of new works by Brooklyn-based artist Nick Doyle. The showcase presents a provocative mix of denim collages and an immersive AI installation, interrogating the myths of Americana and the fraught relationship between land, technology and consumer culture.
Born in Southern California, Doyle is widely recognized for his sculptural wall works created from collaged denim, a medium he uses to interrogate the overlapping legacies of Americana, capitalism, and toxic masculinity. In this exhibition, he reimagines the “American Dream” not as a promise of prosperity, but as a shared illusion — shifting the focus from the historical road trips of the wild West to the modern, speculative frontiers of the digital age.
The exhibition features larger-than-life denim metonyms of Western iconography, such as aviators, car keys, and cacti, alongside elaborate reinterpretations of Ansel Adams’ famous mountainscapes. While the original photographs evoked the optimism of the Progressive Era, Doyle’s versions are literally obscured – one locked behind a chain-link fence and the other boarded up with bricks – signaling a sense of disillusionment with the land’s current state of commodification. Other notable wall-mounted pieces include “Borderland “(2026) and “Articles of Faith” (2026), which utilize indigo-dyed cotton to reference the history of global trade and colonial production.
Marking a provocative shift in his practice, Doyle has introduced his first experiment with artificial intelligence in the centerpiece installation titled “Mirror, Mirror.” The structure resembles a low-rent strip mall building advertising psychic readings; inside, however, visitors encounter Ava, an AI-powered avatar described as a “diva oracle”. Ava interacts with gallerygoers with reality-star “sass,” but her primary function is to mine visitors for intrusive data — revealing a more insidious parallel between AI’s data harvesting and the commodification strategies of past Western myths. By blending traditional handcraft with digital technology, Doyle suggests that while our “frontiers” have changed, the strategy of telling us exactly what we want to hear remains the same.
Nick Doyle’s Collective Hallucinations will run at Perrotin’s New York location until May 30, 2026.
Perrotin New York
130 Orchard St, New York,
NY 10002, United States
