nikolay petrov

Can I take something away from painting so that it becomes something more?

Through ascetic reduction to basic materials, I attempt to make painting and its physicality tangible within space, whilst exploring its points of contact with photography, drawing and sculpture. The works are not intended as representations of reality, but as objects in which lines, traces and the surface itself become the content.

Linked to this is analogue photography, which adopts a similar approach as an aesthetic reference: reductively focused and temporally condensed. The photographic gesture – a movement, a fleeting moment, captured within the medium – is reflected in the practice of drawing. The monochrome representation opens up a space between painting, sculpture and photography. Light, form and material become events in space, traces of movement, sediments of time and place.

Since 2024 Peter Behrens School of Arts, Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences

Since 2022 Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Art, Katharina Wulff’s class Selected

[a]exhibitions and [p]ublications :

2026 [a] Layers · EO Artspace, Galerie Das Bildhaus, Frankfurt

2026 [p][a] New Design from Düsseldorf · Exhibition Design, NRW Forum Düsseldorf

2026 [a] Merry Company · Kunsthalle Barmen

2026 [a] Maximalism · Interim Museum of Contemporary Art, Düsseldorf

2026 [a] Totholzhabitat · art artist, Düsseldorf

2026 [p] selected artist · Art Salon, Berlin

2025 [a] Annual Gifts 2025/26 · Kunstverein Ludwigshafen

2025 [a] Perspectives · Kunstverein Bremen

2025 [p][a] Fieldfisher Art Selection, Düsseldorf