Vom Relativen ins Absolute

Vom Relativen ins Absolute explores the transition between shifting perceptions and the desire for an overarching order. The painting does not describe this transition as the resolution of all contradictions, but as a movement through them.

Acrylic, oil paint, spray paint, charcoal and oil pastel meet in different gestures and layers. Broad movements open the pictorial space, while lines, traces and superimpositions condense it again. Each intervention alters the relationship between the other elements while remaining part of a larger context.

The relative appears here as a fundamental condition of perception: depending on perspective, proximity and distance, what becomes visible and significant continually changes. The absolute, by contrast, does not possess an unequivocally representable form. It appears instead as a direction — as the attempt to find coherence within multiplicity.

At the centre, a figure begins to emerge from the surrounding fields of colour. Its head is lowered while its arms reach upward. On the right-hand side from the viewer's perspective, a red line runs through the image and appears to loop around the upraised arm on that side. It suggests both connection and restraint: the figure gains a presence of its own yet remains part of the painterly field from which it emerges.

The red line recurs throughout Marlon Nikolai's work. Its meaning is not fixed. Depending on the work, it can make a connection, a boundary, a tension or a movement visible. In Vom Relativen ins Absolute, it accompanies the transition between attachment and release.