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Nick Oberthaler Zweifel Und Gnade (Le Doute Et La Grâce)

Nick Oberthaler Zweifel Und Gnade (Le Doute Et La Grâce)

Paris Marais

25 November 2011 – 7 January 2012

Nick Oberthaler is a draftsman who uses intriguing techniques. Though he likes to refer to his works as 'drawings', he also works with paint and ink, which he further combines with pasted-on fragments. He remains partial to paper as his "canvas", due to its fragile quality. The marks that he makes on it are unalterable. The paper is sometimes damaged, and he likes to treat it roughly.

The exhibition title, Zweifel Und Gnade (Le Doute Et La Grâce) – in English Doubt and Grace, refers to these two states that often affect the artist. Oberthaler takes a lot of time to combine his materials and his images: everything may change at the very last minute, and one never knows if a drawing is truly complete when it is exhibited.

The artist presented wall-mounted sculptures in this exhibition. His drawings were juxtaposed with metallic structures shaped like crosses. This module plots a geometry from the wall that then extends the drawing's limits within the space. It is not simply a backdrop: the artist shapes our perception by directing our eye to a meeting point. It is a metaphor of the mirror, in which a favorite image is slipped into the corner. In these sculptures, an imaginary landscape was seen, presented on the panes of a window whose contours have been erased: a nostalgic vision of a state we do not wish to forget.

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