Doubter between the styles (1988)

Review of my exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art in Nuremberg – 1988

He presented his drawings at the Nuremberg Triennial three years ago and his paintings and collages at the Varlsella Gallery in 1986; now he is showing paintings at Schmidt-Bank (until 16 September) and drawings at Faber-Castell in Stein (3 August to 28 September): Jan Niksinski from Warsaw, guest of the Institute of Modern Art.

The “primal fears of the unhoused human being” have shifted: Niksinski is now apparently afraid that his pictures could lose their balance between rationality and the human being. The balance between reason and emotion could be lost; thinking could overtake or even trump feeling.

His recipe for counteraction: the permanent balancing act between reality and abstraction – as reflected in the titles – “Transatlantic” or “Light Source” or “Parallax of Emotion”; Jan Niksinski is not only inspired by reality, but also incorporates it in fragments into his mixed media paintings – lines, for example, that are “really painted like reeds, against a background like structured rock, but then dominated again by the very strict geometric forms, as if he wanted to create a construct. forms, as if he wanted to be a constructivist – which he is by no means

This ambivalence of being and appearance is surely secretly aimed at the brokenness of human existence; the tightrope walk of an eternal doubter who, significantly, does not really call any of his paintings “finished”: he would prefer to keep on painting – as he does in his studio. And if it was after ten years…

-wie-