“Feel Good, Repeat”, “Turn On Turn Off”, “Clickbait” – these are some of the titles that Australian multidisciplinary artist Nikolaus Dolman (born 1987) uses to describe his works. His practice, he writes, surveys the Western lifestyle economy by drawing on the conventions of advertising.

Nikolaus has crafted a visual idiom that is made up of commercial material and found images – and consists of chains of arrows, circles, black holes and clumps of skin. All of these symbols, in some way or another, try to highlight and “subvert the obsessions and repetition of mass media and popular culture.”

The monotonous arrows may depict our tendency to listen or watch something over and over again, the black holes could stand for those sensational new stories that suck us deep into nonsense. By displaying our addictions and vulnerabilities in the face of mass media, Nikolaus wants to “destabilise imitative desires and fictional realities and draw attention to current systems of our social identity.”

The artist writes in his statement that his work “lies somewhere between art and advertising, analogue and digital representation, excess and necessity, product and production.”

Among the venues where Nikolaus has exhibited his constructions are Annandale Galleries (Sydney) and Firstdraft (Woolloomooloo, New South Wales).

Links: Website (www.nikolausdolman.com) | Instagram (instagram.com/nikolausdolman)

Images used with permission.