MUNICH.- ART & SPACE Gallery announces the opening of the first exhibition in Munich by the artist Nico Mares, based in Düsseldorf. There are new large-scale paintings on view.

Emma Mailova: What does colour mean for you?

Nico Mares: For me, colour is the main reason to paint. For me, colour is the main issue!!! For me, colour is an unfailing source of joy.

E.M. What is a source of your ideas – reality or your fantasy?

N.M. As there would be no fantasy without reality, this question does not arise for me. At the beginning of each new project, there is always a specific imagination in the head, just like a rough outline, a starting point for the working process, where I am always working without preliminary drawing and build up the complete painting slowly with highly diluted colour. This is an absolute restart each time.

The finished painting shall, but must not compulsively mirror that initial idea. The painting has to work from and by itself. So that all colours and elements of the painting create an image reality together.

The source of my ideas is reality.

E.M. Why clouds?

N.M. I like clouds. But clouds, such as other basic forms, are only elements of the pictorial invention for me. That are due to their colours and position to each other, and in the image space itself, are approaches for me to situations or snapshots, of events/topics that keep being on my mind. Whereby fantasy is immaterial, as everything on the canvas is real. The order of things and above all their colouring, that is due to the interaction of the different elements.

E.M. Have you ever thought about making installations?

N.M. Yes, I am always making installations in my atelier, I carry the paintings from right to left and arrange them together in groups and sort them and derange them again before sorting them anew./ Installations in the proper sense as well as video/installation I have also made already, 10 years ago, but the painting is perfectly enough for me.