Nina Bachmann

Nina Bachmann’s works blur the contours of conventional identity while playfully mocking what she calls “the absurdities of high-society.” In us there is a wellspring of hedonism, the little voice telling us that it won’t hurt to have just one more.

Most of us know what it’s like to “let go” in the heat of a moment, and most of us know intimately the highs that come with it. But we also know that no high can last. The higher we go, the harder we fall – an unsettling truth.

The subjects in Nina’s works are euphoric, intoxicated and jubilant. They are in a state of arousal. They are even genderless. They deal with the contradictions of desire and aversion, lust and emptiness, absurdity and abyss, dominance and submission. The yellow characters embody the urge for pleasure, to indulge, to feel superior; they are intoxicated by the dissolute life in a world full of privilege, wealth and prestige. But their anxious grimaces betray their insecurities and the lingering awareness that all this excess cannot last. And it is this duality that Nina aims to convey to her viewers, who, perhaps seeing themselves reflected on the canvas, are meant to receive a “tenuous pleasure” from her works.

Though a vehicle for social critique, her works are also a celebration, because it’s through decadence and excess that we can extol dolce vita, the sweet life. Using bright and garish colors, Nina gives her viewers a visual feast upon which to gorge as they reflect on their own place in the scenes they see before them.