Nicolas Feldmeyer: Shadows Hold Their Breath
Encounter is pleased to present Shadows Hold Their Breath, a solo exhibition of new works by Nicolas Feldmeyer opening on January 25th. This focused collection of works on paper extends Feldmeyer鈥檚 sensitive exploration of the poetics of space through material and form. The artist has an ongoing preoccupation with the symbolic and pervasive properties of light, a formal concern with its mouldable character as both intangible yet essential matter. During the meditative process of making these graphite drawings, Feldmeyer felt an affinity with Emily Dickinson鈥檚 1861 poem the 鈥楽lant of Light,鈥� in which a 'listening' and still landscape unfolds beyond itself, becoming almost a state of mind. On 'winter afternoons', 'shadows hold their breath' (as the exhibition title references), captivated by a 'certain slant of light'.
At the core of this new series is a remarkable ability to evoke atmospheres, to construct ethereal moments - landscapes to get lost in. Dappled beams carve pathways through dense groves and illuminating shards suggest spaces beyond our sight. Feldmeyer states, recollecting the scene from which his drawing 鈥楳orning Sun II鈥� was derived, 鈥榮omething about the quality of the light and the arrangement of the trees struck me - like a wordless play with few actors on an empty stage.鈥� As such, in these works light itself becomes choreographed. It not only articulates space and time, but also acts as a mysterious protagonist in constant interplay with objects and shadows. In both subject and form, Feldmeyer's works echo enduring art historical scenes, from the silent forests of Arnold Bocklin to Georges Seurat's hazy tonal studies. The artist builds windows into uncanny introspective places, idealised compositional sets somewhere between fact and fiction, memory and imagination.
These melancholic landscapes are devoid of people. Within their quiet compositions the gaps and blind spots become as important as what is constructed. These drawings are not defined by lines but instead built through their absence. Luminosity is mysteriously extracted from graphite's dark matter and forms are articulated by the places that light does not reach. Daylight is made into a medium, a substance with its own haptic qualities - a tangible sense of materiality, pressure and weight. Feldmeyer's tonal investigations perform an ambivalent function, they both open and close possibilities for space, leaving us unsure of where we stand and how far we can journey through these enigmatic sites. The closer we look the more we question where the light originates and what it shapes. An implied realism is fractured, evoking a certain sense of disorientation and ungrounding. Is the sun rising or falling? Are the shadows enveloping or retreating?
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Encounter is pleased to present Shadows Hold Their Breath, a solo exhibition of new works by Nicolas Feldmeyer opening on January 25th. This focused collection of works on paper extends Feldmeyer鈥檚 sensitive exploration of the poetics of space through material and form. The artist has an ongoing preoccupation with the symbolic and pervasive properties of light, a formal concern with its mouldable character as both intangible yet essential matter. During the meditative process of making these graphite drawings, Feldmeyer felt an affinity with Emily Dickinson鈥檚 1861 poem the 鈥楽lant of Light,鈥� in which a 'listening' and still landscape unfolds beyond itself, becoming almost a state of mind. On 'winter afternoons', 'shadows hold their breath' (as the exhibition title references), captivated by a 'certain slant of light'.
At the core of this new series is a remarkable ability to evoke atmospheres, to construct ethereal moments - landscapes to get lost in. Dappled beams carve pathways through dense groves and illuminating shards suggest spaces beyond our sight. Feldmeyer states, recollecting the scene from which his drawing 鈥楳orning Sun II鈥� was derived, 鈥榮omething about the quality of the light and the arrangement of the trees struck me - like a wordless play with few actors on an empty stage.鈥� As such, in these works light itself becomes choreographed. It not only articulates space and time, but also acts as a mysterious protagonist in constant interplay with objects and shadows. In both subject and form, Feldmeyer's works echo enduring art historical scenes, from the silent forests of Arnold Bocklin to Georges Seurat's hazy tonal studies. The artist builds windows into uncanny introspective places, idealised compositional sets somewhere between fact and fiction, memory and imagination.
These melancholic landscapes are devoid of people. Within their quiet compositions the gaps and blind spots become as important as what is constructed. These drawings are not defined by lines but instead built through their absence. Luminosity is mysteriously extracted from graphite's dark matter and forms are articulated by the places that light does not reach. Daylight is made into a medium, a substance with its own haptic qualities - a tangible sense of materiality, pressure and weight. Feldmeyer's tonal investigations perform an ambivalent function, they both open and close possibilities for space, leaving us unsure of where we stand and how far we can journey through these enigmatic sites. The closer we look the more we question where the light originates and what it shapes. An implied realism is fractured, evoking a certain sense of disorientation and ungrounding. Is the sun rising or falling? Are the shadows enveloping or retreating?
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