Zwischen Ent- und Verwicklung

Zwischen Ent- und Verwicklung centres on a spiral that culminates in the head of a snake. The two forms merge into a continuous movement: repetition becomes progression, while the snake introduces transformation through its capacity to shed what has become too restrictive and continue in altered form.

The title plays with the German Entwicklung — development or unfolding — and Verwicklung — entanglement. Rather than presenting these as opposites, the painting holds them together. Development does not necessarily proceed in a straight line; it can involve returning to familiar structures, becoming entangled in them again, recognising them differently and gradually releasing what no longer serves.

Words and affirmations are inscribed across a chrome surface within this movement. Language becomes part of the transformative process: internal structures are articulated and made visible, while the reflective ground prevents them from becoming fixed. Chrome changes with light, space and the position of the viewer, placing what has been written into a continually shifting perceptual relationship with its surroundings.

The entire surface is permeated with epoxy resin. Pigment, inscriptions, reflective passages and traces of the painting process become embedded within translucent layers — preserved, connected and at times partially concealed. Materially, the work therefore performs its own title: individual elements become entangled while remaining available for renewed perception.

The snake extends this process beyond the pictorial surface. Within Marlon Nikolai’s visual vocabulary, shedding is not simply an image of renewal, but of transformation through release: an existing structure has fulfilled its function and must be left behind for further growth to become possible.

Zwischen Ent- und Verwicklung brings these movements together without resolving them into a simple narrative of progress. Spiral, snake, language, chrome and resin each articulate a different relationship between persistence and change. Transformation emerges as a recurring negotiation between what we carry forward, what we become entangled in, and what we are able to shed.