Sauna, 2024

Nicole Tijoux  

Nicole Tijoux was born in Santiago de Chile and graduated with a Master's Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Chile, with a scholarship awarded by FONDART. Subsequently Nicole was awarded residencies by the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation in New Berlin, New York, United States in 2016, and by Artemarca in Illabela, Brasil in 2017. Nicole has exhibited regularly in Chile and and abroad, most notably her recent 'Apnea' solo exhibition at the 'Centro de Extension' Gallery, University Catholic of Santiago, Chile.

Nicole's work focusses on the visual transformations that occur when the human figure interacts with water. Water and background act as a veil for the human body and the vast expanses of space that encapsulate the form are explored in her beautifully composed and rendered paintings. Her work attempts to address the concept of changing states and the immediacy of this visual change, captivating a moment and translating it onto the canvas.

The expansive spaces within her paintings are there to communicate the smallness and insignificance of the human form in relation to the vastness of the ocean and all that it encapsulates. Nicole's works address ideas of space, silence and solitude, where our visual form blends with the water.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“I like to explore ideas such as how the clash of a body and a stream of water creates an optical problem. The way the shape vanishes in the vapor of the water, and the ghostly appearance of the body that can be captured in the photograph or painting. I try to explore different pictorial ways to solve an image; to splash paint, or drip it? I also try to represent the tension that exists between several bodies in these scenes."

“In the series called “Oceans" I explore the difference between the human and this huge media of water, how small we are in relation to this giant ocean that feeds our planet, in a space of silence and solitude where our colors and form blend with the water.“  

“In the series of oil paintings and acrylic, called “protestas"(public demonstrations occurred in the city, where the police use the water cannon to control demonstrators by hitting them with a high- speed stream of water), the depiction shows how the clash of a body and a stream of water (from a police water cannon) creates optical problems , the way the shape vanishes in the vapor of the water, and the ghostly appearance of the body captured in the photograph. And also, I paint the changes to a body that is knocked down by the stream of water."