Edited by Max Wechsler
Texts (German/English/French) by Irma Arestizabal, Hélène Cagnard, Max Wechsler
224 p. with 180 colour illustrations
Format 30 x 23.5 cm, hardcover with double-folded dust jacket
48,00 €
Anyone who has gazed long enough into the white-hot centre of this yellow picture will burn through the slats of the deckchair. This little pictorial joke in the first truly comprehensive monographic publication of Nils Nova's work to date acts as an appetiser and is able to draw the viewer even deeper into his work. Just as Nils Nova did in 2009, when he was invited to take part in the Venice Biennale, when he first photographed the empty exhibition space in the Artiglieri dell'Arsenale in its longitudinal direction as a reverse shot and then placed the opposite, frontally captured end faces as a photo installation in the previously photographed space.
It is not only the imposing dimensions, writes Max Wechsler in his excellent and illuminating essay, which undermine the imagination when the montage of the photographic "mirror images" causes the real space in its extreme dissolution of boundaries to sway one's own standpoint and point of view; rather, the dissolution of boundaries, a wavering experience of appearance and reality, continues even further when a real picture suddenly hangs on the white wall within the photographed space, which appears to float freely in space on the photographic background. In addition, the polished centre of the picture painted on chrome steel looks like a real mirror. Viewers see themselves and their surroundings projected into the picture and thus involuntarily become part of their own perception, which is almost on the verge of despair due to the floating levels.
Nils Nova is an artist who uses painting, photography, video and found footage to intelligently stage the tendencies of enchantment and mystification inherent in his diverse material. It is therefore hardly surprising that simulacra and parallel worlds come into play and that you don't necessarily have to ponder the shadow of Peter Schlemihl or other sold souls to be struck by slight vertigo.
Exhibitions:
Photoforum PasquArt, Biel/Bienne, 19/06-21/08/2011
Kunstverein Heilbronn, 24/3-6/5/2012
