PETRA RÖS-NICKEL

Enchanting: Petra Rös-Nickel’s paintings draw you into them with truly magnetic power. There is no need for her to abstract from reality, as she simply creates a cosmos of her own. No codes, no links, no hidden linguistics are lurking on the spectator to tell him or her what to see. It is the perception of art in its purest form. The paintings leave room for whatever feelings may arise as an effect these pictures may have on people. You can sense that only a truly free spirit could possibly create such exquisite works of art, which centre and communicate a palette of emotions through components as simple as lines and colours.

 

At first sight, due to their geometrical structures, their clarity, and confrontation of colours and lines, the works of Petra Rös-Nickel might visually remind of Piet Mondrian’s paintings. However, they reach far beyond formal similarities to constructivist or concrete art. It requires a special talent to master those boldly painted structures in such a delicate manner.

 

Rös-Nickel’s paintings affect the spectator in very ambiguous ways. In the duality of a yin and yang scheme, she composes clear, often cold-coloured structures, broken through by what appears to be pure light and divided into what it consists of on a physical basis: colour. Those rhythmical rays cover the canvases like a net or veins, ultimately bringing them to life as an organism of their own. Thus, there are certain dynamics to the pictures that seem to be constantly evolving, revealing a different picture at every glance.

 

These stunning works of art are not only appealing on a pictorial level – the canvas, covered in impasto, becomes a volumetric unit that interacts with the three-dimensional space and its architecture. You can easily imagine the patterns to expand indefinitely as if they were part of something bigger, and making the room they are in their body of resonance.

The unique, vivid patterns, Rös-Nickel’s trademark, can eventually be seen as a metaphor for this world. There are clearly defined structures that might appear cold and grey in our imagination with a haptic like stone or concrete. But there is colour, there is light in this world, which might be represented by something different for every single one of us. It can be a feeling of joy, love, or the pleasures of enjoying art. The lines cross each other’s path or simply coexist in parallels. The two major components of the rigid and the playful are being brought into perfect balance by Rös-Nickel, thus immensely enriching the contemporary art scene.

 

Victoria Schmoll