untitled (VIOLET AIR I) & untitled (VIOLET AIR II)
2025
190×140cm / 190×140cm
Acrylic & Aerosol on canvas
I keep thinking about a poem—the one about being nostalgic for the moment while still living in it. Violet air like—when it's impossible to remember if this happened yesterday or ten days ago, even a year? Everything taken to blurred edges. rewriting the scene, adjusting the color temperature, the spatial relationships, turning life into something more purple. The air holds it all loosely—what was and what was needed, who one is alone and who one becomes in the room with someone else.
photo: malcolm af donner / tuure leppänen
Artist: Dud Nabel
Title: To Sit Or Not To Sit
Year: 2025
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 35 × 25 cm
Dud Nabel @dudnabel works primarily with painting, using language as both marker and erasure through layering, fragmentation, and painterly gesture.
This piece is currently on view in “New Constellations-A Borrowed Room“, an art project featuring 7 Nordic young artists curated by Luyang Jiang @luyangjcq and staged in a residential space of Hong Kong overseeing the world famous Victoria Harbour.
@newconstellationsart
#newconstellations #finnishartists #emergingartists #contemporaryart #contemporarypainting
Meet the Artist
Dud Nabel (b. 1992, Linköping) is a contemporary artist working with painting, where language functions as both marker and erasure.
His work explores the volatility of memory — fading as quickly as it appears, blurring what is remembered with what is invented.
Through layering and fragmentation, language becomes both visible and obscured, leaving behind traces of thought rather than fixed meaning.
Work Description:
1）“To sit or not to sit”
In the realm of the cliché many know from Shakespeare, to be or not to be, the situation for the painter becomes, in a similar vein: to sit and not paint, or not to sit and paint. The question remains open.
2）“Post cereal”
“Why do I stretch canvases? The answer later came while holding a box of cornflakes in the kitchen — I understood.
The box has a function: it contains, protects, presents the contents. But the cardboard itself is also shaped, designed, printed with color and text. It is both container and surface.
Stretching a canvas is the same thing: creating a sphere where something can happen. The canvas is not just ground — it is an architecture, a stage, a package for experience.”
3）“Describe yourself with one line”
From a dialogue I had with the canvas, the answer kept changing. A line is made of lines. A colour is never just itself — it carries every colour it has ever stood beside, leaned against, been changed by.
From a distance, the canvas looks clean. But the closer you come, the fractures begin to appear, each one opening into another.
A self-portrait is not a likeness. It is a structure that keeps revealing itself.
📸: @hongyu.uu@jmrgart@wankm19
#DudNabel
#NewConstellationsArt
#ABorrowedRoom
#NordicArt
#ArtBaselHongKong
“A Borrowed Room”
March 26, Hong Kong
The inaugural project of New Constellations
Seven artists. One gathering.
The beginning of a constellation.
——————————————————————-
A Borrowed Room marks the launch of New Constellations, an independent curatorial platform founded by Helsinki-based curator and cultural strategist Luyang Jiang @luyangjcq
Presented during Art Basel Hong Kong week, the project brings together seven emerging Nordic artists working across painting, sculpture, and installation:
Ramina Habibollah @ramiliah
Hermanni Härmälä @hermanniharmala
Lina Herrmans @linaherrmans
Lassi Kontiainen @lassikontiainen
Elias Langi @eliaslangi
Dud Nabel @dudnabel
Mirella Salo @salomirella
Rather than unfolding in a conversational art space, the project takes place within a temporary residential setting — creating an intimate space for encounter, dialogue, and exchange.
Through this first edition, A Borrowed Room introduces new Nordic voices to a wider international audience, connecting artists, curators, collectors, and institutions across regions.
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Produced by: JMRG, Hong Kong @jmrgart
Supported by: Cloudview Space
Photo credit: Hongyu @hongyu.uu
