NICOLE BIANCHET WA...
Nicole Bianchet was born in 1975 in Los Angeles and studied from 1995 to 2002 at the Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, which is of international significance in today’s contemporary art context.Bianchet effortlessly overrides all post-war critical art conventions. Her media is painting, photography and sound. Large abstract wall paintings often emerge that serve as a presentation surface for the three media and as the “frame” for the production. A skilful combining of the three media results in installations where the artist cultivates a sense of longing similar to what we see in Romanticism.
Bianchet’s abstract painting draws references to art of the 1960s. Her questioning of tachism and the introduction of this abstract form to painting leads to horizontal formats or pre-Raphael tondis. Her technique of partially removing acrylic paint from the surface reveals the wooden board beneath, creating ornamental or crater-like forms that recall abstract, almost romantic landscape shapes.
Her photography also reflects romantic subjects like diffuse landscapes or staged self-portraits. With photography the artist is exploring structural issues around painting, yet she is also interested in investigating film and art history, as in the series from “Someplace where there isn’t any trouble, you should clap your red shoes” 2003. The artist herself is standing at the shore of a sea dressed in a wet, golden mud splattered wool jacket and in large, red glittery shoes. The photos were taken in the Fall and it is difficult not to notice that the subject of the self-portrait is suffering from the cold. There are traces of wet and mud on her skin, hair and clothing. These are scenes that could come out of a crime thriller. Nicole Bianchet is playing with the viewer’s fantasy as well as with film and art history. Just as David Lynch was hinting at an interpretation of the film ”The Wizard of Oz” with his road movie “Wild at Heart”, Nicole Bianchet in her photo series undertakes a production that refers to Lynch’s film. Red shoes play a large role in Bianchet’s staged photographs as well as in the two film productions.
The leading female character in “Wild at Heart” clicks her heals together like a field marshal when ever something goes wrong, and Judy Garland, in the main role of the fairytale “The Wizard of Oz”, clicked her magic red shoes’ heals together while chanting “There’s no place like home” over and over again, so that her wish, to be home again, could come true. Bianchet’s red glitter shoes stand out in the photographs like painted sculptures amongst the landscape and refer more to the origin of the photos, that is: painting as the result of light and material with a side glance at a prop taken from film history, as well as the sculptural influence of art history. In the case, Donatello’s Maria Magdalena (1457), as the wooden color wool jacket worn by the artist in the photographs is related in form and color to the dress of golden hair worn by Maria Magalena. The artist’s pose also refers to that of Donatello’s sculpture.
In principle: Nicole Bianchet creates painted, composed and photographed modules whose compositions create new impressions. Bianchet’s modules also lead to “spatial-collages” based on film and art history (Romantic painting and the Tachism of earlier sculptural periods) and self-composed and written songs. The sounds invoke narrative structures like wind or airplane sounds and with soft or roughly sung sentence fragments, seem like an inner voice, and create a certain sense of longing.
On the one hand, Bianchet’s music is not separable from her painting and photography, on the other hand it could also be seen as her second artistic form.
The artist is also present with her music outside the visual art context.
Klara Wallner