WHITE BOX is pleased to present and exhibition featuring Heinrich Nicolaus, an internationally renowned painter, publisher, and multimedia artist based in Chianti, Italy.
Rare, subtle and timeless, Heinrich Nicolaus (“21”) takes as subject the communal process of art-making through extended dialogues with art historian and scientist Wolf Guenter Thiel and curator Juan Puntes, as well as through the collaboration of a variety of contemporary local and international artists, architects, musicians, film and video makers, new media artists, writers, actors, fashionists, magicians, etc. Nicolaus also highlights the ideas of experts on Renaissance Art and Theory, including Max Seidek, Silvana Seidel Menchi and Gabrielle Perretta, and incorporates historical information furnished by archaeologist, Lucia Donnini, and architects, Frances Levine, who reference and postulate a time when art provided for and explored undifferentiated notions of science, spirituality and magic.
Inspired by Guilio Camillo’s Il Teatro della Memoria created in 1530, the multidisciplinary collaborative theater piece (“21”) depicts processes and events of the present world crisis related to the imbalance between the soul and the world (anima mundis) as a backdrop for a multitude of new and inspiring actions and endeavors. Nicolaus reflects to some extent upon the influential, communal attitude found in Paul Thek’s collaborative artworks produced in the Low Countries during his exiled European years following completion of his critical work, “The Tomb-Death of a Hippie”