Nicola Arthen

La próxima semana inauguramos «Una cosa que siempre está muy lejos en el tiempo», exposición individual de Nicola Arthen (@nic_draft ) con curaduría de Rodrigo Santoscoy (@arqueologiarodrigo ). Nicola Arthen es un artista radicado en Ámsterdam. Su práctica es una investigación sobre las relaciones mutuas entre los objetos y las capacidades humanas, una negociación entre el lugar y la experiencia. Le interesa el dilema que surge cuando las cosas entran en un espacio artístico. Al aislar los artefactos en su estado periférico y convertirlos en protagonistas, se involucra en sus historias, luchas y cualidades únicas, así como en la poética y la política del trabajo para reproducirlas. 📍 Les esperamos el jueves 19 de marzo a las 7 p.m. tomarnos una cervecita en la inauguración.

“Labour (Holy Motors Edit)” is a 30 seconds edit from the original 1h 42’ 27’’ performance. The original video captures a part of the production of a car engine that I did as a Summer job at a BMW car factory in Munich in 2014 – and several years more. The video is integrated into the car’s side mirror and loops with a short pause revealing the actual mirror.

I really liked the proposal from @marcovaltierra and @_iego_ for the show “Holy Motors” @espaciocabeza : There was only going to be a car and a bed in the space facing each other, the space only lid by the headlights and all the works would attach to or just around those two protagonists. Kind of cinema in space. With works by @fryejanina @zazilbarba #antoniomenchen @fpolidura @lucia___r_ Running till 10th of May 2026

Details from the work „Reading A Reflection“ shown at Platform, Stockholm. I find lots of meaning indulging in those connections. How does this thick wool-knit fold around the metal bars and what holds it in place? Lots of bare textures and selected rough edges in this installation, too.

The second image shows one of the subtle reliefs referencing the watermarks typical for copyrighted photos. Working with generated imagery, the question of ownership and novel creation hovered above it. In order to achieve something where property feels embedded in the material, much of my experimentation at the TextielLab revolved around the atypical approach to achieve a pattern that is independent from the image depicted.

Fun fact: one of the engraved smiles on the wooden carts is copied from a drawing I did 7 years old of a sun-like character. The other one is corporate.

Full documentation is now also featured on the Kuba Paris website if you prefer galleries-only advertising.

Hung low, the underside of the textile – accessible via makeshift wooden carts on which you lay down – creates an intimate space, toned down in colour, personal images nearing one’s face, the surrounding sound dampened. I like to think of it like the blanket or tablecloth that you build a world under as a child – a place of observation of the adult’s lives. The carts propose both being in a position of rest or maintenance. @cprintjournal wrote “installed impeccably like a psychedelic wave in a corner. An unexpected feature adding to the playfulness is exploring the underside of the tapestry, to which notes and images have been attached by way of a skateboard.” and just named @rodrigoreds and my duo @platformsthlm one of the ten best shows in 2025.

Reading A Reflection 2025 Collage from generated images, machine-knitted wool, cotton and filling yarn, steel rig, photos as C-prints, wooden carts with engravings, working pants, lights and sensors (760 x 160 x 145 cm)

On view in a duo-show with @rodrigoreds in Stockholm @platformsthlm until 18. January 2026 This installation is based on a large Jacquard-knit and depicts different spaces connected to imagination and memory and how these are shaped by generative technologies. I am interested in textile as a mobile image – something hovering between a depiction and an object, something pictorial and sculptural at the same time. The way a work is attached, how it is joined to a space is crucial to my practice. Thanks to @loumouw @hnnhaltmann @stichtingniemeijerfonds @fonds_kwadraat for your support as well as @mondriaanfonds via the “Artist with Child” voucher. Photos 1 & 2 by @studioloumouw

Earlier this year, I’ve been working in the @textielmuseum in Tilburg, NL on a new tapestry made from a large collage and originally to be hung like a tubular screen. I was invited to develop this piece based on a research around including „ghost images“ to a textiles‘ surface (akin to watermarks?) and it’s been really rich to experiment with the expertise and machine park at the lab. Weirdly, it was also one of the first works I can remember making without knowing where it’ll end up. I won’t pretend being a knitter on a mission, but I did really enjoy being in the rhythm of making tapestries again, and be supported by the team there. Shout out to @yanic_ ! Weeks of malleable image generations manifest in just minutes as a new tangible banner. Yarn choices allow unseen forms to emerge ((vibrantly)). Sometimes the magic happens on pixel level, a slight wind runs through the image giving way to a new character. And we do this in between the eyes of museum visitors, because the TextielLab is a working space inside a museum. We run around this wicked steel octopus, feeding it wool, cotton, filling fibres, and it births a series of knots, accurately held to one another, gazing back to us „What is it you want from my warming and exhaustive presence?“ There is a series of ghosts entering the fabric - disguised, morphing, multiplying and once called by a spell. The piece isn’t tubular anymore, it’s flaring. I’m super excited to show it as a central piece of _Eavesdrop_ @platformsthlm in Stockholm opening 13.11.2025 in a duet with @rodrigoreds

Back in late Spring, where many days were spent at the rooftop workshop of Agustín and Ramses to produce a neon piece of a scale yet unfamiliar to me. Us seeking shelter from the scorching sun in a room with lid burners which are used to make the glass tubes malleable and bend them into the shapes of the drawing. The final neon has seven, stacked layers of drawings – each of a different colour. Calculating their crossovers and making everything slot into each other was the most difficult part. At night, with Gollo and Christa, we weld little metal connectors on the sidewalk at the torch-light of our phones. Daytimes were spent building a base at Luis‘ studio, where Z. would crawl between the power tools while Alondra and me screwed everything together. This work brought so many friendships to the fore, people who like to be together by creating something. Big shout out to y’all.

Naturalisation of categories o también in your own backyard (Papa Russet, pepino, tomate ciruela) Machine-knitted wool textile, found umbrella stretchers, found and casted concrete, sand, wall paint, burnt and sun-dried grass, de-hydrated palm branch, fruit of lluvia de oro, rebar, laser-cut steel. 87 x 61 x 61 cm and 65 x 42 x 39 cm Throwback to Spring when @marcovaltierra invited me to join a residency @tantan_._._._ What began as an exchange of texts on botany as tool of categorisation and harnessing of plant life, quickly showed parallels to AI image-generators and the classifications that are at their core, too. I worked with small textiles depicting generated images that I brought from a previous project. They were author-less images and needed grounding in a place. The idea was to make an assemblage around them that would draw from a specific location but remain of indefinite scale - a model/derelict infrastructure? as a way to muddle with categories. Part of the work sits on a steel structure in the show Marco curated, alongside work of @miguelcintarobles @alondra_aca @cosarapozo and another part is at Calle Cruz Verde. In the show, the walls were painted in a yellow hue up to the eye height of Z. (who just learned to stand then) and up to the height of the french window sill in the space, which made the gallery seem shifted slightly to under ground level. It was also a nod to #GhislaineLeung’s work ‘Browns’, a score in which all available walls are painted in brown to standard picture hanging height (always: who’s standard?). Her book ‘Bosses’ somewhat also an origin story of that work , resonated so deeply at the time, partly because it’s such a frank reflection on the emotions of becoming a parent while trying to work as an artist and because she’s such a generous writer, noting and undoing limitations. Thanks to Marco and to @guadalajara90210 , @coleccionzarur @juvenal_urzua for hosting us!

Thankful to have been part of Salón Acme In Mexico City once again. One of the most complete exhibition contexts I’ve showed in - thanks to a.o. the mediators being available next to the works @r.otciv , the clever install, the sharp combinations of works with the rooms of the historic building by the team @alvaro__ugarte @zazilbarba @sebastianvdp and @ana_castella . Shout out to them for having created a remarkable artist-run platform for contemporary art, now in its 11th iteration. The place was packed every day, there were panel discussions, @guadalajara90210 created a nocturnal garden, @terremoto_mx with @helena.lugo had a fresh selection of theory and publications in (mostly) Spanish language. I showed a work that keeps changing meaning for me and I’m once again reminded of the possibility for learning new insights when you stay with the work and in discussion, which was additionally spiced by seeing #manueldelanda on Friday speak about AI and how intelligence sits in the entirety of the body (feelings are its basis). My own body at the same time making me note that this city was at its driest period, a monster of traffic and diverging realities, so we drink the Agua del Dia. Additional thanks to @samariagf and the curatorial jury: #benedictabadia, @dario.escobar , @patihertling , @anais_lepage , @alexromero3000 y @santiagovillanueva64 . Slides: 1. We Fed It The Weathers And It Gave Two Suns (Receptor /Antennae) 2. @nin_flux 3. @lisasudhibhasilp 4. @cuerpocelestemx 5. @omr.mz 6. @charlie_godet_thomas 7. @jrr________ 8. @nic_draft Selfie corner

Last day today of our exhibition and Open Crit from 2-4pm! In 3DCXP, two groups of four artists -- located either in London or Munich -- sent digital models to each other. These were 3D-printed in each artists respective city with locally-sourced clay. What was conceived as a workaround to restricted travel routes due to the pandemic, increased custom thresholds and avoidance of flight-emissions, has allowed the importance of hosting to come into the foreground.

3DCXP is conceived as an ongoing collaborative exhibition project and was initiated by @nic_draft and @ivorick “3D printing challenges the ways in which we can consider the physical existence of our online avatars, artworks, and creations. They are no longer relegated to the digital realm, but can be given retranslated or newly invented physical bodies and manifestations. When we consider the exchange of files and the care extended to bring these objects into being, the works become bundles of traveling matrices that evade systemically imposed borders.” text by @foxy_azucar , full version on @xxijrahii_ website. 
MUC
→ Achinoam Alon @bizzaro__achi → Fabian Hesse @faby0o → Mitra Wakil @dynamitra → Ivo Rick @ivorick 
LDN
← Nicola Arthen @nic_draft ← Estefanía Batista Flores @estefantastic ← Maria Joranko @foxy_azucar 
← Kate Kuaimoku @damnitgranite Thanks to @accessallareas.work and @julieheneault for the custom designed logotype and identity.

Goldsmiths MFA Degree Show, 2022 Bichos [Critters] Welded and painted steel structures made-to-measure for three of the building's heaters and two electricity outlets Detail views of the disassembled server racks, part of the work "We Fed It The Weathers And It Gave Two Suns" 📷 @gilliesadamsonsemple and Nicola Arthen

Installation views Goldsmiths MFA Degree Show, 2022 The installation "We Fed It The Weathers And It Gave Two Suns" is based on five Jacquard knits hanging from enlarged, laser-cut machine knitting needles and draped over office chairs held in an angle with a metal floor bracket. The space is circumscribed by two diagonal rows of pillars made from disassembled server rack parts. Each knit depicts a double image, one modelled in a 3D-software by the artist and the other an AI-generated “reflection” of the prior. A voice whispers several prompts used in this translation process from the ventilation shafts of the black box that is a server rack.
 As Artificial Intelligence produce images without authorship, their materialisation as knitted blankets brings these not only closer to the body, it also makes a conceptual connection between the Jacquard loom as a preceding element to the binary code system of modern computers – the very host system of AI. 1 loop = 1 pixel. 📷 @gilliesadamsonsemple and Nicola Arthen