Nicole Wermers

Nicole Wermers (born 1971) is a German artist, born in Emsdetten, and based in London.^[1]

Education

Wermer studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Hamburg (Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg) from 1991 to 1997 and received an MFA from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London in 1999. She has participated in residencies at Delfina Studio Trust in London (2004) and Camden Arts Centre in London (2005), and most recently received a fellowship at Villa Massimo, the German Academy in Rome (2012).^[2]

Career

In her sculptures, photographs and collages, Wermer's connects formal considerations with a discussion about urban space and its social, economical and psychological aspects. Combining references to art history with modern surfaces and materials, the artist explores fine art aesthetics within the design of daily life, specifically the ways it has been appropriated by consumer culture.^[3]

For example, she has created a series of freestanding portals out of variously shaped and configured pieces of metal, which recall both the formal considerations of modernist sculpture and airport security gates. When invited to artistically intervene in Tate Britain's refurbished café, Wermers responded by crafting a double-bowled spoon whose design was based on various modernist prototypes.^[4]

In 2015 Wermer’s was nominated for The Turner Prize in recognition of her exhibition Infrastruktur. Her installation Infrastruktur adopted the glossy aesthetics and materials of modernist design and high fashion, alluding to themes of lifestyle, class, consumption and control.^[5]

"I am quite interested in the way that physical infrastructure determines social infrastructure, the way in which they determine our movements through the city and our actions, and all the rituals we form around them".^[6]

The show consists of two bodies of work, one of untitled chairs with fur coats on the backs of them. It was inspired by people in cafés or restaurants putting their coats on the backs of chairs to claim that little area for themselves and how it becomes privatized through this action. Wermer’s wanted to take the temporary status of the optic and make it permanent so the chair and the jacket were undetectable, she made them one by concealing the back of the chair in the fur coats lining.

The second body of work is Sequences, which takes another temporary observation of a public space, this time looking at tear off notices as a starting point. She makes these tear off notices of white painted ceramics. Wermer’s wanted to make them heavy and 3D but at the same time empty of content, making the only visible as structure, as a sequence of either stripes or not stripes.

This exhibition is reflective of Wermer’s interest in the “private space vs. public space where pedestrian turns into consumer, in that state of late capitalism this is something we deal with on a daily basis. There is no public space anymore”^[7]

Exhibitions

Wermer's work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions including The Hayward Gallery, London; Gagosian Gallery, New York; Herald St, London; Garage Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow and Tate Britain, London.^[8]

Collections

The artist's works can be found in the permanent collections of Tate Britain in London, Galerie der Gegenwart/ Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Karl-Ernst Osthaus Museum in Hagen, Germany, and as part of the DGZ Bank Collection in Düsseldorf, among others.^[9]

Awards

In 1998-99 Wermer received the DAAD Jahresstipendium, London, 1997 Award of the Dietze Foundation, Hamburg.

In 2015 was nominated for the Turner Prize along with Bonnie Camplin, Janice Kerbel, and Assemble^[10]

References