Nicole Henning

Henning’s work explores fundamental questions about the individual’s place in today’s world. Her recent paintings depict this world as a colorful, surreal playground. Her extensive experience as a stage designer informs her art, with the stage serving as a central element of her creative reflection. In her earlier works, these stages were set in private rooms, model landscapes, or dollhouses, with Anna, her protagonist, either present or absent. The stage design and mise-en-scène reflected Anna's elusive realities.

While her earlier stages were primarily interior spaces, Henning's current compositions incorporate elements of the outside world. She sources fragments from the internet and her photo archive, including scenes from consumer culture and the leisure industry, and arranges them into intricate backdrops. These backdrops form the setting for painterly enactments, dramas, and games where various protagonists emerge, blending into their vivid surroundings and becoming part of the object world they inhabit. Her mise-en-scène addresses the complexities of a modern world where simulated realities and constructed worldviews are prevalent, emphasizing the role of the individual within these contexts.

Henning’s painting technique allows her to capture the immediacy and changeability of reality. The traces of her process, the vigor of her brushstrokes, and her vibrant color choices convey liveliness, violence, and ambivalence. Her work draws aesthetic inspiration from Pop Art and theatrical backdrop painting, using abstract painterly interventions to add layers of interpretation to her pieces. This unique approach positions Henning as a distinctive voice in contemporary art, seamlessly blending theatricality and visual art to probe the multifaceted nature of modern existence.