Underground Memorandum

Underground Memorandum
Richard Nikl
Opening: 21. April 19:00 - 22:00

Five new works on canvas show clusters of air pockets on monochromatic grounds. They are at once representational and abstract - following the spatial norms of everyday terrestrial experience while vaguely respecting the finer points of Euclidean geometry. You are in a hole, you are in a cave, you are inside you. The evident morphological integrity of the series - dealing with asymmetrical symmetry, polymetric patterns, seamless shell forms and contemporary theories of spatial organisation - produces obvious phenomenological problems. What we are looking for is a basic unit of artistic signification to simplify the complex variegated order, which society is no longer able to face.

The Underground Memorandum is a co-interpretation. It is a testimony in the form of a borehole sample, a composition of cavities with shovels, pickaxe and miner’s helmet. A visualisation of J.R. Pick’s aphorism: a hatching chick exclaims “I’ve never seen such a mess!” Nikl’s work mines pure geometric abstraction and closes the deal: what he owes the grid and what the grid owes him.

Richard Nikl (b. 1987, Prague, CZ) lives and works in Frankfurt, DE.
Recent presentations of his work include: NADA, w/ Shore Gallery, Miami; Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK), Frankfurt; KIM Contemporary Art Center, Riga; Café des Glaces, Tonnerre; Plato, Ostrava; Art Düsseldorf w/ Shore Gallery, Düsseldorf; Vienna Contemporary w/ Shore Gallery, Vienna; National Gallery, Prague; Palais des Beaux-Arts Bozar, Brussels; Lovaas Projects, Munich; Czech Center, New York; Parallel, Vienna; Museum of Modern Art, Moscow; Futura, Prague.