Nicolas Vionnet – Q1 Art Competition – Artist Portfolio Magazine

• Artist Portfolio Magazine – Q1 Art Competition
• Nicolas Vionnet – Zurich, Switzerland

Nicolas Vionnet’s primary medium is acrylic on canvas. His chiefly large-scale works play with space and expanse. Although almost always realistic, his paintings have more in common with abstract images than real landscapes. He paints disruptive grey strips across his clouds and allows coloured surfaces to drip down the canvas in accordance with the laws of gravity.

Vionnet is fascinated by such irritations: interventions that approach and create a non-hierarchical dialogue with the environment.  This discussion opens up a field of tension, which allows the viewer an intensive glimpse of both these phenomena.

Vionnet uses the same approach and the same strategy for his installations and objects. Irritation and integration. A fundamental confrontation with the history of a place leads to a subtle and more precise intervention of the object. Take for example his man-made grass island at the Weimarhallen Park (Weimar, GER), which ironically intensified the park’s own artificiality. In ‘Close the Gap’ (Leipzig, GER) he bridged the space between an old-town row of houses with a printed canvas image of the now much frowned upon prefabricated building. A reference to changes in time and aesthetics.

Nicolas Vionnet lives and works in the Zurich metropolitan area. He has finished his studies at the Academy of Art and Design in Basel. In 2009 he graduated from the Bauhaus-University Weimar with a Master’s degree in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies. Extensive exhibition vita, such as 5th Odessa Biennale of Contemporary Art (UKR), 4th Aarhus Biennial Exhibition Sculpture by the Sea (DEN), III Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (RUS), Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (USA), The Wilson – Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum (GBR), Ausstellungsraum Klingental Basel (SUI).