Structures, physique and free geometric forms: sculptures by Nicole Nickel and Friedemann Grieshaber in the Darmstadt gallery Netuschil.
The Darmstadt gallery Netuschil presents in its current show collages, objects and digital works by Nicole Nickel (above) and sculptures by Friedemann Grieshaber. Photo: Andreas Kelm
DARMSTADTThe color white and the geometry of the cuboid: Nicole Nickel’s most recent objects made of colored wood in Darmstadt’s Netuschil gallery determine two extremes of constructive art. But the Berlin artist overcomes the limits of reduction that she sets for herself, as not only shown by the digital animation on a wall.
Because in her “polytopes” she juggles the (mathematically infinite) possibilities that white and cuboid offer when they are brought together to colored sticks and then nested so many times that in a narrow space there are x-fold depths, angles and refractions : highly complex structures that, as wall reliefs or flat sculptures, always offer the eye new situations and thus bring the ability to perceive almost to its limits. Then there is no proper construction, as is the case with some of Nicole Nickel’s collages in strict colors from this year, which Netuschil is also showing. Rather, it is structured as if it were arbitrary. And yet there is a coherent whole. After all, these objects are not only perfect architectures in terms of their craftsmanship – but they have been deprived of any architectural purpose.
Above all, they are also conceptually “buildings”, and thus the logical further development of Nicole Nickel’s wall objects from 2011 to 2013, sometimes only possible thanks to modern computer technology. In these works the artist deals with the destruction of human protected spaces that become blocked Transform creative spaces. Strong colors make it clear what happens when the “house” construction and its walls or steps are deprived of the depth of the room or when they get out of alignment. All use is lost, but the imagination is fired and the view is caught.
TERM
The exhibition in the Darmstadt gallery Netuschil
(Schleiermacherstraße 8)
is until November 14th On Thursdays and Fridays from 2.30 p.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. (aka)
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In this game of building, destroying and staging, Nickel’s art meets the objects of the second artist in the show. Friedemann Grieshaber is far more drastic when it comes to the material of his small sculptures. It’s concrete, which on the one hand goes well with the closed houses or open spaces that Grieshaber sometimes even pours in brick form. It leads to the construction site – and on the other hand it can be wonderfully alienating. Because his real theme is always the “living space”, as one of the sculptures is also called.
This space has a lot to do with experience and emotional life, because Grieshaber repeatedly inseparably connects his reduced architectures with abstract human bodies, merging the two with one another, which means that the viewer realizes that the situation of these people standing or sitting is ambivalent. Because man remains the master of building. But he is also a prisoner in his own psychic house.
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