Independent NYC
Nana Wolke
08.05.25 - 11.05.25Click here to access the list of works
NıCOLETTı, London, is pleased to announce its participation in Independent, New York, with a solo exhibition by New York-based, Slovenian artist Nana Wolke, in a shared presentation with Management, New York.
Exploring issues related to perception and modes of apprehension of space and time, Wolke’s series of works usually begins on film-like sets, where the artist records the unfolding of staged situations and improvised actions occurring in spaces spanning social hierarchy – from hotel rooms and private apartments to architectural complexes and public spaces, among others.
At Independent, Wolke presents a new series of paintings honing in on and observing the distortion of symbols associated with American suburbia through the prism of waning girlhood and newfound power in femininity, replete with Campbell’s soup cans, cowboy iconography, bananas, seduction, boredom and escapism. Painting in her signature style from self-captured low-fidelity footage, she directs her (and our) attention towards Upstate New York, depicting scenes soaked interferences to iconic late 90s films such as The Virgin Suicides, or American Beauty. Playing with the viewer’s position and perspective while moving from exterior to interior spaces, Wolke focuses her attention on unstable, transitory moments, capturing the impermanence of youth and the existential drama of life lived at the margins.
Shot interchangeably in Callicoon, Upstate New York, and on constructed sets in New York City, the locations were carefully selected for their evocative qualities – quiet residential streets lined with early 20th-century homes, weaving between open fields and dense woods. These backdrops reference a nostalgic American suburban landscape that is both familiar and symbolically charged. Upstate’s proximity to New York City heightens a psychological tension of proximity and distance – a sense of the “just-out-of-reach”. This tension mirrors broader questions about geographical and cultural peripheries, echoing adolescent desires to transcend one’s immediate environment, whether in rural America or, in Wolke’s case, Eastern Europe in relation to the global West.
Materially, Wolke’s process reinforces this conceptual layering. Construction sand, often sourced from the filming location itself, is mixed into the gesso to create a granular substrate. Over this textured ground, the artist first applies thin layers of oil paint, emulating the artificial luminosity of staged lighting, before tapping thicker paint onto the surface to mimic the spontaneous, low-resolution aesthetic of nighttime videography. The resulting paintings echo both cinematic composition and tactile immediacy, underscoring the tension between control and rawness that characterises her practice.