KARL OSKAR GALLERY
Berlin, Germany
Nina Rodin, Stuffed, 2020, giclée print on aluminium dibond, 50 x 33 cm.
KARL OSKAR GALLERY
Karl Oskar Gallery presents a solo booth by Swiss-Danish artist Nina Rodin, whose work explores the relationship between art and science. After receiving an undergraduate degree in Astrophysics and a PhD in Neurology, she studied art at the Slade in London. Her background in science influences both the methodological approach central to her artistic practice and the choice of materials. Rodin’s work has spanned various media, ranging from print, photography, sculpture and large-scale installation, but the subject always returns to the painterly mark.
According to Rodin, science is ineffectual as an original mode of expression but supplies a rich source of material and methods.
The origami arrangement featured in Categories of Near-infinite Permutations uses organic systems to explore human expression. Based on a Fibonacci spiral, which is mathematical distribution found in nature (for example in the seeds of a sunflower). One Thousand butterflies are folded from photos of marks of historic paintings, drawing the history of paint into the scientific system.
Stuffed symbolises her discomfort with the historicity of painting, how old it is, how gestures are increasingly repeated, and how being a painter in the contemporary art scene can be seen as stuffy and staid.
Nina Rodin, Category of Near Infinite Permutations II (detail), 2019, 1000 origami butterflies, giclée printed washi paper, entomology pins, 160 x 160 x 9 cm
Nina Rodin, Category of Near Infinite Permutations II, 2019, 1000 origami butterflies, giclée printed washi paper, entomology pins, 160 x 160 x 9 cm