Hunted Projects is pleased to present I Really Mean It, a solo project of new paintings by New York artist Nick Farhi, on view from 17 April to 17 May 2026.

This suite of works brings together four small-scale paintings that resist immediate cohesion, offering themselves as fragments that may, or may not, resolve into a shared narrative. Each work operates independently, yet subtle echoes emerge across them. The viewer, positioned within this environment, is invited to navigate a space where meaning remains deliberately unsettled.

Drawing loosely on the visual language of cinema, the works adopt moments that feel staged yet mysterious or anonymous. A florist extends a bouquet toward a blonde figure; elsewhere, a character is implied rather than defined, their identity hovering between specificity and invention. Narrative cues appear only to dissolve under scrutiny. The question of who speaks, who is addressed, and to whom the titular “it” refers remains open, suspended without resolution. In this way, the paintings resist fixed interpretation, foregrounding the instability of perspective and authorship.

Objects recur as quiet anchors within this shifting terrain. A melting gelato, a glass shoe, and obscured figures locked in an embrace suggest a heightened sensitivity to time’s passage and the fragility of lived moments. These elements function less as symbols to be decoded than as indicators of transience, where intimacy, memory, and perception are held in delicate balance. Scenes feel partially concealed, as if glimpsed in passing, their contexts obscured or displaced. Urban life hums at the periphery, where movement, speed, and fleeting encounters register through suggestion rather than depiction, evoking a rhythm of living that is both immediate and intangible. Figures remain indistinct, caught between presence and disappearance, their identities never fully secured.

The title I Really Mean It operates as both declaration and ambiguity. The pronoun “it” resists anchoring, expanding to encompass multiple possible referents, from the figures within the paintings to the artist’s own position. Created in the context of Farhi’s relocation from New York to Milan, and developed as a project of recent studies, this envelope of works reflects a moment of transition, where colour, composition, and subject matter register an evolving relationship to place. The exhibition unfolds as a space of fleeting images and quiet accumulations, encouraging a mode of viewing attuned to nuance, duration, and the unresolved. In I Really Mean It, painting becomes a site of suggestion rather than conclusion, inviting sustained attention to the temporality of fragile moments.