N.Lichtig, PICTURES OF NOTHING (pencil and oil on canvas—variable sizes, sound pieces—variable lengths, gold leaf on paper/print on paper—variable sizes), 2012 — ongoing

PICTURES OF NOTHING takes its origin in words pronounced in German, Czech, Hungarian and Serb.... Both the graphism and melody of these voices/words, infiltrate the painting through forms, which gradually transform, by layers, into landscape, and the origin, ofthe painting – the words, "disappear". The "nothingness" of the title's series refers here as to nothingness as a generative space : In Chinese philosophical traditions, particularly Daoism, nothingness (wu, 無) is not perceived as emptiness in the negative sense but as a space of potential and transformation. The idea of leaving blank space in Chinese landscape painting embodies this principle, where the absence of form allows the viewer’s imagination to complete the picture. As François Jullien notes, such blankness “opens things onto their absence” and creates a dynamic interplay between what is present and what is implied.

In the exhibition of the Kai 10 where a space was dedicated to the series, the sound piece was to be heard once a day at a specific time, transforming the room into an experiential meditation on temporality and absence. The once-daily occurrence of the soundpiece emphasizes time as a layered and subjective experience. In Daoist thought, time is not a rigid structure but a fluid axis, shaped by the rhythms of nature and the individual’s awareness. This interplay of sound and silence creates an auditory “landscape” that mirrors the visual voids and gestures in the Pictures of Nothing series.

 
2023 in : Un temps filaire, L.A.C, Sigean, France
2020 in: Le Reservoir, cur. by Clémence Boisanté/Bernard Teulon, Sète, France.
2018 in: Catching the Light, cur. by Ludwig Seyfarth, Kai 10 / Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf, Germany.
2014 in: Pictures of Nothing, cur. by Jan Ketz, Raum für Zweckfreiheit, Berlin.
2013 in: Memory Gardens, cur. by Hélène Audiffren, Annexe, MRAC, Sérignan, France.