LOVAAS Projects is pleased to present the recent body of work by Richard Nikl (born 1987), a Czech artist living in Frankfurt. “God and Harvard” is Richard Nikl’s first solo show in Germany; he is presenting seven new works. 

 

The title “God and Harvard” questions the different modalities of knowledge systems and their relevant discourses. The assumption spiritual and academic modes of knowledge have different values or are fundamentally separate is a failure to acknowledge the inherent complexities of knowing. It is the organic and interconnected osmosis of/to enlightenment that Nikl leans into with this body of work. Nikl works with the idea of aesthetic autopoiesis, meaning the visual features within a work are part of self-referential system, in which all elements are interlinked and influence each other, regardless of the reason for choice/impulse behind it. This brainy unhinging from aesthetic hierarchies resides comfortably with humor and inherent irony in the artwork.

 

The magnetism in Nikl's work lies in the subversion of the most classical Western art subject, the portrait, by making portraits that are void of representation. Nikl’s work draws upon parametricism, the contemporary architecture style coined in 2008 by Patrik Schumacher the creative partner of Zaha Hadid, as well as parametricism’s formal predecessor, the occultist free forms of so called visionary art. Robert Venosa and HR Giger as means of debasing the traditional Western format of the portrait and creating a space for unhinging the modus of knowledge hierarchies and visual hierarchies.

 

Richard Nikl graduated from Städelschule Frankfurt in 2017. He has shown internationally and taken part in various group shows and solo shows in locations such as Palais des Beaux-Arts Bozar in Brussels, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, Czech Center in New York, National Gallery in Prague, and KIM Contemporary Art Center in Riga. In 2013, he was nominated for the Czech’s most prestigious contemporary art award, the Jindrich Chalupecky Prize.