GALLERYX PRESENTS [ventre] - An exhibition of new works by digital artist Nihil

GalleryX – the new Dublin space for unsettling art – is delighted to introduce to Ireland the work of French digital artist Nihil.

Nihil is a writer, photographer and digital artist living in Norway. Inspired by ancient sacred texts, psychedelic trips and life experiences in hospitals and medical research centres, his texts and images reflects on transcendence, identity and individuality.

His work has been featured in two personal exhibitions in Paris and Berlin and he participated in numerous collective shows in USA and Europe. His artworks have been published in art books and magazines and are part of the permanent collection of the Contemporary art museum in Sicily. He first showed in Ireland as part of GalleryX’s Anniversary Show in December 2015.

The exhibition will include digital prints on dibond and on paper, and will be opened on 7 April at 6PM in the presence of the artist. A performance TBA will take place during the opening.

Nihil does not create for you, nor for anyone, he does not target any audience and does not respect any pre-established rule. With no stylistic pretension in mind, he does not profess to launch a new trend or to illustrate such or such critical or aesthetic concept. He has no goal of completion, no deadline, no publishing obligation, no plan of achievement other than the one to create congruence between his own will and the artistic object he is designing. Failure, whether temporary or definitive, is accepted. He has no ambition to be recognized in any way, or to inspire any radical and revolutionary manifestation, but rather an existential ambition: the point is for him, like Beckett’s character in The Unnameable, to “do what I have to do, the only way that can put an end to it, do what I have to do.”

Approaching and confronting Nihil’s work demands asceticism. You need to get lost and forget yourself, lose your bearings, accept no truce and take no rest. Only then will you emerge as a different person. The pictures and the texts will not leave you indifferent but they will not strike you either. They are an immense yet quiet power, with no appeal to lyricism; they will slowly crush you, fill you and impose themselves, flooding you. At first you will believe you will drown, and then you will learn how to swim, and finally you will be able to breathe. We can call it ambient art, as in “ambient” music. Humbly accept that there is nothing to understand, see or feel everything at once, accept to fall apart and then become, maybe, a the end, a figure from Nihil’s work.

— adapted from Jean Delesquif’s introduction to Nihil’s upcoming art book. [Ventre]