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Inventive Nikolic

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Tomislav Nikolic, To Explain How it Feels, 2020 - 2021, synthetic polymer, marble dust, 22ct gold leaf on linen,  plastic gesso & wood, 192.5 x 235 x 15 cm Tomislav Nikolic's To Explain How It Feels as installed at Fox Jensen McCrory. Tomislav Nikolic, To Explain How it Feels, 2020 - 2021, synthetic polymer, marble dust, platinum leaf, 20ct citron gold leaf, mueum glass on linen, gesso compound & wood, 144 x 134 x 13 cm Tomislav Nikolic's To Explain How It Feels as installed at Fox Jensen McCrory. Tomislav Nikolic's To Explain How It Feels as installed at Fox Jensen McCrory. Tomislav Nikolic, To Explain How it Feels, 2020 - 2021, synthetic po0lymer, marble dust, 16.9ct lemon gold leaf, 12ct white gold leaf, museum glass on linen and wood, 144 xx 134 x 13 cm Tomislav Nikolic, To Explain How it Feels, 2020 - 2021, synthetic polymer, marble dust, copper leaf on linen & wood, 108.6 x 88.6 x 6 cm Tomislav Nikolic, To Explain How it Feels, 2020 - 2021, synthetic polymer, marble dust, 20ct citron gold leaf, museum glass on linen & wood, 83 x 76 x 8 cm Tomislav Nikolic's To Explain How It Feels as installed at Fox Jensen McCrory. Tomislav Nikolic, To Explain How it Feels, 2020 - 2021, synthetoc ploymer, marble dust, 18ct green gold leaf on linen & wood, 143 x 142 x 7 cm Tomislav Nikolic, To Explain How it Feels, 2020 - 2021, synthetic polymer, marble dust, 22.5 Champagne gold leaf on linen & wood,  92.2 x 81.2 x 8 cm Tomislav Nikolic's To Explain How It Feels as installed at Fox Jensen McCrory. Tomislav Nikolic, To Try To Explain How it Feels, 2020 - 2021, synthetic polymer, marble dust, 24ct gold leaf, copper leaf on linen & wood, 122 x 91.7 x 7 cm Tomislav Nikolic, To Try To Explain How it Feels, 2020 - 2021, synethetic polymer, marble dust, 15.3ct green leaf on linen & wood, 65.4 x 82.5 x 8 cm

With this show, it is the large work that impresses with its grand scale, and the fact that its thick red frame (and the green frame of its neighbour) causes your eye to restlessly travel around the bright outer edges, pinging along the eight accentuating angular points of each work's perimeter. This implied rotation, that is parallel to the wall, works successfully with the pull and push of the centre.

Auckland

 

Tomislav Nikolic
To Explain How It Feels

 

18 March 2021 - 24 April 2021

Tomislav Nikolic is justifiably much admired for his methodical exploration of painted (on canvas) and wooden frames, arranged in concentric rectangular formations to investigate optical and physical depth-as well as surprise the observant perambulating viewer.

He has had many exhibitions at Fox Jensen McCrory, but this one is a little different with the inclusion of a particularly large work, and two items that exploit wooden/plaster frames with spiky leaf motifs in the corners and edge centres—creating new perimetric linear rhythms as a foil to the standard throbbing pulse that beats against the flat wall.

Nikolic‘s complex works, with their soft and hard edges and narrow fluro planes tucked around corners—or hidden facing the wall—can incorporate over fifteen concentric rectangles seen from the front: as if a woolly-threaded Rothko to be determinedly burrowed into. Plus there are the anti-glare museum glass sheets, iridescent marble dust concoctions, and various types of shiny metallic leaf that act as foils with the more optically stable conventional colour.

With this show, it is the large work that impresses with its grand scale, and the fact that its thick red frame (and the green frame of its neighbour) causes your eye to restlessly travel around the bright outer edges, pinging along the eight accentuating angular points of each work’s perimeter. This implied rotation, that is parallel to the wall, works successfully with the pull and push of the centre.

It is Nikolic‘s unusual manipulation of the viewer’s expectations and the viewer’s body that make these spatially complicated paintings / relief sculptures so intriguing, especially with his deft and inventive placement of linear and planar colour based on (or within) parts of the frame. Each is like a solitary, loaded-up, but exceptionally flavour-rich serving in a meal—that packs in the equivalent of an entire eight course dinner.

John Hurrell

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