English
Deutsch
until 27.02. | #2348ARTatBerlin | Galerie1214 presents from 1st February 2019 the exhibition bebop by the artist Nicole Wendel.
As an artist and draughtswoman, Nicole Wendel develops her work more and more consistently as research on the perceptive and active body in space. For Wendel, two-dimensional drawing and performance have become two complementary instruments of her artistic work.
The curator and art critic Ludwig Seyfarth writes about Nicole Wendel’s current graphic work:
“Nicole Wendel’s large-format core drawings suggest a space of indeterminate depth in which an airy substance seems to spread. It almost seems as if the picture is breathing. The analogy to human breathing is not accidental, for the artist’s entire graphic oeuvre is closely related to physical processes and actions, which she usually carries out as a performer together with other partners.
Thus we see spontaneous impressions of the body on the drawings – traces of feet are clearly recognizable, for instance – as they also emerge as direct results of performances. In addition, there are carefully placed individual, often parallel strokes, either precisely as if drawn on a ruler or gestically set and sometimes so fine that they remind one of engravings in an etching plate. There are also linearly delimited areas whose diffuse background differs in brightness or texture from its surroundings, so that the impression of superimposed transparent foils is created. The evoked spatiality is also reminiscent of the spread of sounds, and the association with the musical is created by individual drawing elements resembling notations of a graphic score.
Horizontal straight lines give the composition an architectural hold, as it were. Here again there is a direct reference to the human body, which Nicole Wendel sees as an architectural structure that she seeks to expose by artistic means. This is in the tradition of Susan Klein’s somatic bodywork, which understands each body in its natural (architectural) structure, resulting in an individual sequential order of movements. Among Susan Klein’s students were the well-known choreographers Trisha Brown and Sasha Waltz.The reference to the performative is not only in the spontaneous impressions, but also in the meticulously balanced, sometimes very finely drawn elements. Everything is related to the physical gesture, which, like the movements in dance, can be performed very quickly, throwing the physical energy out of itself, as it were, but also very slowly and almost meditatively.
Nicole Wendel consistently explores the gestural, which plays an important role in non-representational painting, in the medium of drawing, combining it with elements of constructive abstraction. In the smaller drawings, the various elements, which interweave to form complex structures on the large sheets, are presented as if in isolation. Parallel or circling layers of strokes are arranged next to geometric figures and wiped parts. Through the different directions and dynamic relationships of the elements, the artist seeks to capture a kinetic space through drawing.
In both the smaller and the large-format sheets, the conventional contrast between surface and depth is consistently undermined. Everything takes place on the surface of the picture in so far as it charges itself in a complex way and is the scene in the truest sense of multi-layered processes and at the same time becomes an imaginary space, a kind of resonating space into which the artist listens, as well as into her own body, which she transfers onto and into the picture as it were.”
– Ludwig Seyfarth 2018
Vernissage with Performance: Friday 1st February 2019, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.
For the opening, the artist will choreograph a live performance (performance 19:30 to 20:15 in the galerie1214) with the dancers Johanna Ackva, Johanna Faber, Even Foster and Michael Ludwig.
Exhibition period: Friday, 1st February – Wednesday, 27th February 2019
Artist Talk: Saturday, 23rd February 2019, 14:00 Uhr
[maxbutton id=”382″ ]
Image caption: Courtesy of galerie1214 – Nicole Wendel
Exhibition Nicole Wendel – galerie1214 | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
