Artistic Position

Marlon Nikolai's artistic practice investigates how selected aspects of the hidden can be translated into a state of experience. The hidden is neither a single motif nor a closed invisible world. It is an open, superordinate field of what has not yet become conscious, sensorially accessible, sufficiently differentiated, articulated or materially manifest to an individual. Memories, visions, inner images, intuitions, affects, preconscious processes, implicit knowledge, latent information and as yet unrecognised relations may form aspects of this field. They are examples rather than a complete definition. The hidden necessarily remains larger than any single artistic manifestation.

From this perspective, art is both threshold and process of translation. The work does not reproduce an inner state that is already fully known. Through pictorial, material, optical, spatial and bodily decisions, it brings selected, initially implicit or withdrawn phenomena into a concrete encounter. Perception is not understood as passive reception. It emerges through the interplay of attention, sensory channels, bodily position, movement, memory, context and consciousness. A work changes in experience when light, distance, viewpoint or spatial situation changes. The viewer therefore does not remain outside the work, but becomes part of the conditions through which it appears.

The current practice works primarily through visual, tactile and kinaesthetic-spatial perception. Colour, transparency, reflection, focus, blur, figure and ground structure the visual field. Surfaces, fractures, layers, smoothness, resistance and material depth activate haptic imagination even when the work is not touched. Scale, proximity, distance and movement in front of the work generate a bodily and spatial relationship. In interdisciplinary projects, this research expands into sound, rhythm, silence and resonance. The relationship between sensory channel and perceptibility is central: the senses are not merely routes to a finished content, but instruments through which experience is differentiated in the first place.

Information forms a transversal dimension of this research. It is not only data or a fixed message, but may appear as difference, relation, pattern, trace, rhythm, signal, fragment, code, constellation or possibility. Information may be organised psychically, materially, culturally, optically or spatially. A fracture contains information about pressure and change; a layer about time and superimposition; a repetition about rhythm and deviation; a memory about personal and cultural inscription. Meaning therefore resides neither exclusively in the work nor exclusively in the viewer. It emerges relationally in the encounter between an underlying structure, its material or pictorial formation, and individual perception.

The materials and media of the practice perform several functions at once. Pigment is material substance, optical carrier of colour and image-forming medium. It absorbs and reflects light; more importantly, through deliberate arrangement it produces lines, planes, figures, spaces, contrasts and relations. These pictorial configurations may acquire individual, cultural or archetypal significance. Pigment itself is not archetypal; the form produced with it may assume archetypal quality.

Epoxy resin functions as a membrane between visibility and withdrawal. It produces depth, enclosure, gloss, transparency and optical transformation. It may preserve traces, cover material and remain permeable at the same time. In its transition from liquid to solid, it connects process, condensation and manifestation. Chrome does not reflect an isolated surface; it incorporates light, space, viewer and movement into the appearance of the work. A fixed image thereby becomes relational and perspectivally unstable. Surface, layering, fracture, trace and material tension carry time, gesture and change.

Light is both a physical phenomenon and a central experiential principle. It is the condition of visibility and is closely related in the work to orientation, awareness and presence. Light does not appear as gold or decorative warmth, but as white and clear, becoming chromatic and spectral through refraction. The prism makes perceptible what is already contained within white light but has not yet been differentiated. This offers a precise analogy to the practice's core proposition: the threshold does not produce the hidden, but alters the conditions under which something already present may become experiential. Darkness is not the moral opposite of light. It is the contrast and the as yet unilluminated condition from which visibility may emerge as transition.

Waves, frequencies, resonance, atomic and molecular organisation, and the interaction between light and matter form further components of the research. Waves describe propagation, superimposition and movement; frequency describes recurrence, rhythm and differentiation; resonance describes a relation in which a system responds to an impulse. Matter refers to density, resistance, surface and spatial manifestation. These terms are not arbitrarily equated with spirituality. They are used precisely where real optical, acoustic or material processes are relevant, and are then opened as artistic models of thought.

The practice's visual vocabulary is hierarchically organised. Archetypal and organic forms such as the snake, shedding, spiral, sunflower and eagle constitute one level. The snake connects directed movement, instinct and transition. Shedding refers to the release of a previous form, renewal and vulnerability. The spiral describes development as a return that nevertheless changes. The sunflower stands for a conscious orientation towards light and therefore for attention, orientation and growth. The eagle expands the perceptual field by combining overview with precise focus, distance with proximity. These forms are not fixed symbols with universally identical meanings. Their effect emerges through composition, material, body of work, cultural memory and personal experience.

Alongside them are pictorial and compositional structures such as line, plane, figure and ground, rhythm, repetition, condensation, dissolution, superimposition, focus and perspective. Optical and energetic phenomena include light, darkness, spectrum, reflection, refraction, transparency, wave, frequency and interference. Material operators include pigment, resin, chrome, surface, fracture, trace, density and membrane. Informational and relational manifestations may appear as pattern, signal, fragment, network, archive or constellation. Spatial and temporal states include threshold, void, horizon, duration, movement, proximity, distance and becoming. These levels must not be confused: a vision is not a visual motif, pigment is not an archetype, and information is not a decorative code. Only the artistic process of translation brings them into a concrete relation.

The spiritual dimension of Nikolai's work is experiential rather than dogmatic. It emerges where perception reaches beyond immediate visibility without abandoning material reality. It concerns the relationship between consciousness, presence, inner experience, possibility and larger orders without prescribing a religion or esoteric explanation. Scientific, philosophical and spiritual levels remain distinguishable and may nevertheless resonate within an artistic experience.

Nikolai studied Communication Design at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and graduated in 2025 with the thesis 'Erfahrung des Verborgenen - Dialog Man Ray / eigenes Werk'. The connection between pictorial practice, phenomenological investigation and design precision forms an important basis of his current position. His works are not intended as final explanations. They open situations in which perception may deepen, relations may be reordered and selected aspects of what has not yet been fully recognised may become experiential.