CICA Museum, M Gallery
March 20 – 24, 2024
2023.03.20-24
SpaceTime Metamorphosis
Nicola Barth’s work explores the state of transformation and the in-between spaces where things are neither one thing nor another. She is interested in the ambiguity and penetration between different states, where absence and presence coexist.
“My artistic work is a journey into the interstices of existence, where ambivalences prevail. I explore the state of metamorphosis in which things are neither one nor the other, in which absence and presence exist side by side and simultaneously, and try to visualize processes and shapes in motion – in informal paintings and drawings, accompanied by excursions into space (sculpture) or into the digital world of photography.
The indeterminable, the changeable in form, shape and space and finding the appropriate language for the changing shape, the changing form in the changing space. That is what occupies me. This development, transformation and change of form in turn often takes place ‘invisibly’ for us, in spaces and worlds behind them, on meta-levels, in spaces that are not spaces (in the true sense of the word). The focus of her work is beside transformation the topic of language and the space and is accompanied by questions about identity, the alienation and defragmentation of the individual and its location in space and time. Short visual light that gives insight into a temporally and spatially limited section of a development process. Painting and drawing mainly in graphite and oil are complemented by tree-dimensional works and digitally manipulated photography. The contend follows the same principle and is as abstract and surreal as her paintings.”
Nicola Barth, born in Mölln in 1966, now lives and works near Frankfurt am Main. She completed her master’s degree in German Studies at the JW Goethe University in Frankfurt. She always wanted to write books, but soon put down the pen and picked up a paintbrush to find new forms of expression. Words were no longer enough to describe what she was dealing with: permanent metamorphic processes in non-obvious areas. “Non-representational painting is now my language without words. That makes sense to me, because I “report” from worlds and expanses in which languages are spoken that we don’t (know). My gaze is always focussed on what lies behind, beneath and above, in worlds of experience that are not obvious. So my language must also lead from the depths of the experience of being, another, more open form of communication that is grasped with other senses, a language that is impression and expression and frequency, without naming, evaluating, classifying.” In addition to transformation and change of form, her work is about language and space, accompanied by questions about identity, alienation and defragmentation of the individual and their localization in space and time. Her works have been on show in numerous curated individual and group exhibitions in Germany, Italy USA, Switzerland, Greece and 2021 at the London Art Biennale. She has been nominated for various art award and has received the Artfacts Performance Award for Strong Artfacts Rank Growth Trend in 2020.
