Nicolai (Reykjavik, Iceland, 1964) lives and works between Beijing, Paris, Madrid, and Reykjavik. He began his artistic training at a very early age in the studio of his uncle, the painter Oddur Steinthórsson.
His work is characterized by a deep bla...
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Nicolai (Reykjavik, Iceland, 1964) lives and works between Beijing, Paris, Madrid, and Reykjavik. He began his artistic training at a very early age in the studio of his uncle, the painter Oddur Steinthórsson.
His work is characterized by a deep blackness that appears empty, as well as a sacrilegious and sacrificial eroticism. His symbolic conceptualism conveys a poetic vision of nature and its eternal laws. He held his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1980, "Hommage à Mishima."
For Nicolai, the female body is not only a source of inspiration, but also of constant study and analysis, from a physical perspective to the symbolism represented by women at the beginning of life. With precise brushstrokes, despite their abstract appearance, the artist's eye delves into the body he contemplates. His aesthetic approach remains bold, his subject matter daring, moving away from any arbitrariness to focus the gaze on disturbing figures that simultaneously evoke attraction and repulsion, and a curious feeling dominated by the beauty of emptiness and nothingness; a state of mind.
With an excellent command of drawing that can be appreciated in the backgrounds of some of his works, Nicolai subtly proposes architectural constructions that represent urban, oppressive and confined spaces, which allow him to capture the human figure, especially that of man, in an unnatural and disproportionate size, with the aim of creating suggestive and uncomfortable, attractive and repulsive environments at the same time.
Since then his work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world.
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