Nikola Ukic
16 June – 18 July 2014
Expanded Fields
The Hengesbach Gallery is pleased to present new works by Croatian sculptor Nikola Ukic in Wuppertal, following two major museum exhibitions in Zagreb and Split.
In his sculptures and pictorial works, Ukic explores the dynamics of transformation processes that seem never to come to a halt: changes in the external form of things as well as changes in our own organic condition and our access to the past. Ukic works with polyurethane. Although derived from a chemical process, the forms he models from this material have an organic quality—suggesting growth and decay, human body parts. Even in their rigidity, they express a suggestion of transformation and the constant reshaping of human life.
In his most recent works, the dialogue between rigidity and animation, between inner organic and outer movement, has become even more complex. These pictorial works consist of several layers of polyurethane on a canvas support. Ukic pours his viscous material in free-flowing motions. Since each layer never entirely covers the pictorial plane and large gaps always remain, new glimpses of lower layers continually emerge. Many of the poured layers consist of multiple colors, sharply separated by contours yet connected in their movement. Ukic smooths each layer and applies photographic image transfers onto the glossy surfaces. These, resting on the fragmentary levels like in a printing process, accumulate in clear and blurry traces like a patchy memory.
Thus, movement arises from the pouring process, from the interaction and interplay of color, the interpenetration of the layers, and from the dynamic motion of the fragmented images. The softness of the material evokes associations with organic processes, with veins and digestive cycles. At the same time, the photographs reference landscape, its tectonic layers, its light. This creates a sometimes unsettling ambivalence between the eruptive processes of organic life reproduction and those of elemental natural formation.
Installation Views
