Overview
'I often use very contradictory materials, every step in my working practice could be described as a balancing act on a thin line evading categorisation. It's also about the reaction / rebound between me and the work / surface within the coordinates of time and the used media.'
Nick Oberthaler’s artistic practice explores conceptual painting as a medium for visual and spatial experiences within the genealogy and history of abstraction. His paintings refer to visual codes and parameters that he borrows from image theory, digital space and institutional contexts, and are characterised by a clear and reduced visual language, dominated by a technological quality which is repeatedly reinforced by the use of iridescent signal colours. Referencing the artistic work of role models such as Blinky Palermo, Marthe Wéry or James Bishop, his paintings – created with acrylic paint on canvas, aluminium and paper – are formal compositions that repeatedly evoke associations with the motifs of the window and the landscape. Oberthaler plays with the boundaries of painting: where does the work ‘begin’ and ‘end’? The examination of the relationship between frame and image plane, as well as their mutual interchangeability, often turn his paintings into sequences in a spatial installation, allowing them to enter into a dialogue with the exhibition space and the viewer.
Oberthaler was born in Bad Ischl, Austria in 1981. He studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Geneva, and currently lives and works between Brussels and Vienna. His teaching activities include a professorship for Painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (since 2020). His works are held in important institutional collections, including the 21er Haus/Belvedere, Vienna; LENTOS, Linz; Landesgalerie Linz; and Caldic Collection/Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands. He has been featured in numerous international exhibitions, notably RIDEAUX/blinds, Institut d’Art Contemporain Villeurbanne/FRAC Rhône-Alpes, France (2015); The blackbird must be flying, with Thomas Julier, Centre d’Art Bastille, Grenoble (2014); Calculated Reserve, Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen/Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2014); and Minimal Myth, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2012).
Nick Oberthaler’s artistic practice explores conceptual painting as a medium for visual and spatial experiences within the genealogy and history of abstraction. His paintings refer to visual codes and parameters that he borrows from image theory, digital space and institutional contexts, and are characterised by a clear and reduced visual language, dominated by a technological quality which is repeatedly reinforced by the use of iridescent signal colours. Referencing the artistic work of role models such as Blinky Palermo, Marthe Wéry or James Bishop, his paintings – created with acrylic paint on canvas, aluminium and paper – are formal compositions that repeatedly evoke associations with the motifs of the window and the landscape. Oberthaler plays with the boundaries of painting: where does the work ‘begin’ and ‘end’? The examination of the relationship between frame and image plane, as well as their mutual interchangeability, often turn his paintings into sequences in a spatial installation, allowing them to enter into a dialogue with the exhibition space and the viewer.
Oberthaler was born in Bad Ischl, Austria in 1981. He studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Geneva, and currently lives and works between Brussels and Vienna. His teaching activities include a professorship for Painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (since 2020). His works are held in important institutional collections, including the 21er Haus/Belvedere, Vienna; LENTOS, Linz; Landesgalerie Linz; and Caldic Collection/Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands. He has been featured in numerous international exhibitions, notably RIDEAUX/blinds, Institut d’Art Contemporain Villeurbanne/FRAC Rhône-Alpes, France (2015); The blackbird must be flying, with Thomas Julier, Centre d’Art Bastille, Grenoble (2014); Calculated Reserve, Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen/Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2014); and Minimal Myth, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2012).
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