Nicky Assmann combines knowledge from science, technology and art in spatial installations in which the sensory experience is central. The core of her solo exhibition Radiant was a majestically moving light installation that took up the entire front room.
Nicky Assmann (Utrecht, 1980) uses light, mechanics and abstract geometry to create optical phenomena with which she investigates the mental and physical perception process. Against the background of our visual culture, in which the experience of reality increasingly takes place in the virtual domain, she returns to the physical foundations of seeing. In her artistic research she connects current technological developments with elementary physical processes.
Optical works
The exhibition consisted of space-filling works. 'Radiant' is a dynamic 'mobile' sculpture in which optical patterns and colour effects occur through a precise balance between space, form, movement and light. The work is reminiscent of twentieth-century artists such as Calder, Bridget Riley and Otto Piene, who developed a universalistic formal language with their abstract-geometric work, in an attempt to transform art.
In her graduation work, the cinematographic installation Solace, an enormous film of soapy liquid is raised and illuminated in such a way that a turbulent choreography of light, colour and flowing movements is created, which then bursts and disappears again.
Experiment with physical processes
Assmann experiments with the properties, behavior and aesthetics of materials in physical processes. A preview of the film work 'Liquid Solid' (in collaboration with Joris Strijbos) showed the registration of the freezing of soap films in the open air with temperatures around -22 degrees Celsius. The work is the result of a research in collaboration with the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station of the University of Helsinki.
'Aurora (Studies)' consists of a study of the oxidation process of copper plates. Assmann processed the material and thus functions as a catalyst; slowly, almost invisibly, the color shades of the plates changed over the course of the exhibition period.
Comments
“At Radiant, Solace, with its rainbow-coloured soap curtain and its projections that transform the empty 'nothing' into a grandiose 'something', is still the highlight.” (Lucette ter Borg, NRC Handelsblad, 3 November 2015)
“An 'oooooooh' escaped me. For a moment I saw myself reflected in two thin, vibrating, semi-transparent mirrors in which the most incredible colours were crawling through each other.” (Jeanne Prisser, de Volkskrant, 4 November 2015)
The exhibition was made possible by the Mondriaan Fund, Fonds 21, Stimuleringsfonds and Stichting Stokroos.