Exhibition opening Friday 05. of January at 6 p.m.
Simon Nicholas is known for his paintings of people and man-made structures. For his exhibition in Tegnerforbundet is paint replaced with pencil, and the city with the studio. In a series of studio drawings, he himself is the human being, and the small and large components of the studio are his extras.
Simon Nicholas:
Since 1991, I have used sketchbooks of the same size and paper quality to make drawings of the daily routine in the 9 studios I have had until today. The archive consists of over 1500 drawings which are mostly made with 3H or 5H pencil. In some works I used 9H pencil and in several cases the pencil has scratched through the paper. The choice of a hard pencil has set certain guidelines for the project. Graphite hardened with clay gives a line that is sometimes barely visible, a line reminiscent of silver pencil drawings. Both a perceptual and procedural approach to drawing is central. I gradually began to use a form of punctuation with dots and dots that register, I guess, where my eyes stop or rest on an object or somewhere in the room. In a conventional illusion, one sees what is depicted before one sees the way the illusion is shaped. The project “Mapping the Studio” has gradually become an exploration of the observation drawing's basic toolbox, line and value, and this means that we as spectators participate equally actively in the reconstruction of the illusion of space. The project thus documents both different physical aspects of a studio at the same time as the archive can also be perceived as an analogous depiction of saccades , rapid eye movements that move the gaze of focus from one point to another.
Simon Nicholas (born 1954) is a graduate of the Camberwell School of Art, London, the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. He has had solo and group exhibitions in Norway and abroad, including Trafo Kunsthall, Asker, University Gallery, Newcastle, Kings Place Gallery, London and Galleri Brandstrup, Oslo. Nicholas has received various scholarships and his work has been purchased by a number of national and international collections.
Events during the exhibition period
Sunday 14 January at 1 pm: Meet the artist - Guided tour with Simon Nicholas
Tegnerforbundet holds open tours every Wednesday at 16.30 during the exhibition period. For updates on events, stay tuned to our website and Facebook.
