Nick Oberthaler "Eventuality of an Attempt"
11 Feb - 25 Mar 2012
The upcoming exhibition at KIOSK is a double-bill of solo presentations by artists Nick Oberthaler (1981, Austria, currently based in Brussels) and Sara van der Heide (1977, South Korean currently based in Amsterdam). Both artists’ practice is dominated by an examination of the fundamental potential of the pictorial medium. Oberthaler mainly focuses on the formal pictorial traditions, prying them open to widen their scope, where Van der Heide explores the status of the medium itself by looking at art-historical themes through a contemporary frame. The works on display in both cases testify of a specific sensitivity for the incorporeal aspects of painting, watercolours or drawing.
Nick Oberthaler brings his show "Eventuality of an Attempt" to KIOSK. The attempt in question is one he will undertake to attain a condensed atmospheric experience through the use of mixed techniques on paper, sculpture and the integration of a spatial intervention. But the title also stresses the precariousness of this attempt and the idea that the exhibition’s form will never be fully realized or ‘complete’.
Oberthaler is fully aware of the traditional formal components of which the pictorial representation of a landscape is composed. Horizontal lines slide through several of his abstract geometric designs like so many limitless horizons in landscapes.
The same intention will also gear the treatment of KIOSK’s architectural landscape: the central dome room accommodates four equal spaces created by a cruciform construction of gypsum board. Some of the wall boards function as temporary drawing and painting surfaces, others bear Oberthaler’s pictorial ‘canvases on paper’ and ‘paint drawings’ that are mainly made with Indian ink, wax, pastels, gouache, photographic fragments and collages. These expand onto the mirror-covered wall construction to become three-dimensional temporary landscapes. The work thus explores the material and spatial boundaries of painting. With German romanticism as an undercurrent throughout "Eventuality of an Attempt", the artist expresses the yearning to reach a similar level of the sublime through reduction.
Opening: Friday 10 February 2012
Nick Oberthaler brings his show "Eventuality of an Attempt" to KIOSK. The attempt in question is one he will undertake to attain a condensed atmospheric experience through the use of mixed techniques on paper, sculpture and the integration of a spatial intervention. But the title also stresses the precariousness of this attempt and the idea that the exhibition’s form will never be fully realized or ‘complete’.
Oberthaler is fully aware of the traditional formal components of which the pictorial representation of a landscape is composed. Horizontal lines slide through several of his abstract geometric designs like so many limitless horizons in landscapes.
The same intention will also gear the treatment of KIOSK’s architectural landscape: the central dome room accommodates four equal spaces created by a cruciform construction of gypsum board. Some of the wall boards function as temporary drawing and painting surfaces, others bear Oberthaler’s pictorial ‘canvases on paper’ and ‘paint drawings’ that are mainly made with Indian ink, wax, pastels, gouache, photographic fragments and collages. These expand onto the mirror-covered wall construction to become three-dimensional temporary landscapes. The work thus explores the material and spatial boundaries of painting. With German romanticism as an undercurrent throughout "Eventuality of an Attempt", the artist expresses the yearning to reach a similar level of the sublime through reduction.
Opening: Friday 10 February 2012