Burrow

With her large-format pictures representing (everyday) objects as almost pure planes of color, Alice Nikitinová occupies a unique position in contemporary art. She seems to pursue painting as negation. Perhaps Nikitinová pursues in her works an attempt to decipher visual signs, for example when she seems to be painting traffic signs in pictures that bring to mind both traffic regulations and works by Piet Mondrian—or neither. Presumably, this painterly decryption is meant to be neither criticism (of consumption) nor revaluing (of art), but instead a way to empty the signs of meaning. Even the identifiable products depicted by the artist, such as toilet cleaner or a hot-water bottle (fig. J, fig. K), are suitable neither for rebelling against nor embracing the consumer world: nowhere do we see a brand name like “Brillo”. Instead, Nikitinová is evidently fascinated only with the shapes and colors of these neutral bottles ”behind the closet.“

The publication is conceived as a big formatted artist book that leaves enough room for the numerous illustrations of Nikitinová's paintings. The book accompanies the artist's first comprehensive solo exhibition - Visual Conversation – in Germany and contains views of Kunsthalle Erfurt, which reopened after the renovation in 2017. A short essay by Silke Opitz, art historian and exhibition curator, is included.