Exhibition with new works of painting in Weimar

Painting exhibition at the Kneisz furniture store, 2016

"Laudatio: "Kriese bei Kneisz" was the title of my short eulogy at the time, which will be a little longer today. It makes sense why, given the opulent oeuvre on display here, in the stairwell, in the cellar and on the second floor. It's not for nothing that Nikolaus calls it a "work exhibition". The exhibition of his new paintings can also rightly be seen as an artistic interim balance sheet.

However, please do not expect an overall appraisal of more than two decades of visual painting. The opulence and heterogeneity of the work created to date do not make conclusive assessments easy. Nevertheless, a presentation such as this is probably what one should call a "self-confidently presentable impression of the moment".

An exhibition in the Kneisz furniture store means first of all: creating an ambience. Habitable rooms become art rooms. That is what makes it special. The murals on display therefore have a double frame. The outer and larger one is, of course, the high-quality furnishings. Nikolaus' works enter into communication with a living environment of exquisite quality. This deliberately creates a total work of art.

The fact that this also creates tensions is intentional. These are transferred to the viewer with surprising, astonishing and sometimes irritating effects. Everyone will experience this differently. Many things are unsettling because they go against the grain of our usual or practiced reception habits. These murals change the sense of space. They literally fill the room. At the same time, windows open in them, perspectives widen. They make deep horizons visible - or condense structures. Their "other reality", as Nikolaus calls it, does not want to seriously engage with the functionality of the furnishings. These include Bauhaus icons such as the Marcel Breuer chair or the Wagenfeld lamp.

 

The Bauhaus saw no essential difference between craftsmanship and painting. Its clear, objective formal language is combined with a high utility value. - For Nikolaus Kriese, too, craftsmanship remains the prerequisite for art. His confidence in his craft enables him to take up a wide variety of themes, forms and motifs and to vary design techniques. The respective formats adapt to this effortlessly. The trained theater painter knows how to create or produce visual effects.
He uses this in the sense of his aesthetic and relies on strong contrasts, combining objects in expressive forms of expression.

Static forms alternate with dynamic, sometimes witty and ironic gimmicks.
The interplay of lines, surfaces and color combinations is perfected with noticeable ease. But many of these arrangements are only cheerful worlds at first glance. They also have shallows. They create distance to the astonished viewer and thus block harmonious viewing. This also applies to the opulent stagings with their surreal features and enigmatic abstractions.
Meditation pictures look different.

Even what appears clearly organized and structured often does not fit together harmoniously. For example, when photorealistic architecture appears in colorful landscapes or accurately painted surfaces are condensed into restless tapestries.

Many of Nikolaus Kriese's pictures are like nature: they ask no questions, but provide many answers, as a landscape philosopher and poet once said.
For example, the large-format "Summer, Sun, Rain" from 2012 with a flying DNA structure. A new world in front of a familiar landscape. A tiny windmill can almost be made out on the horizon.
The picture entitled "Kaliningrad" is different, with its lively, largely harmonious colors. - Anyone who experiences the old Königsberg today will find anything but this. As a tourist, you see Potemkin facades, with the exception of the cathedral.

Keyword geography. It does not exist in Nikolaus' work in the conventional sense. We are either confronted with surreal-looking sections of the world or arranged landscapes that defy precise attribution or classification.
The latter also applies to the numerous allusions and borrowings from different periods of art history.

The painting techniques and use of materials are correspondingly variable. The new murals in oil and acrylic in particular show "strong, thickly applied materiality", as Nikolaus says.
The color and spatial tableaus are dominated by cool blue and gray with dissonant, always surprising accents. The visual language with the almost sterile coolness of its geometric forms reflects New Objectivity..."

V. Liebrenz 2016