Nadim Vardag fathoms the construction of images transmitted via the media and the fundamental structure of the cinematographic apparatus in such varied genres as installation, drawing, or film. Analyzing the compositional principles and mechanisms of cinema and film production, the artist deals with the formation and manipulation of perception through the mass media and its dependence on illusion and reality. In so doing, Vardag relies on the “cinema” as a metaphor, by the way of which he negotiates such themes as the “dialectic of desire and disappointment”¹ and issues appertaining to site specificity and institutional criticism in his minimalist, installational settings. Recurring patterns and basic components of film and cinema production are analyzed, removed from their contextual frameworks, and condensed to cinematographic snapshots within video loops, displays, screens, vacant projection areas, or drawings suggestive of a constructive approach.

The evn collection owns a work by Nadim Vardag that oscillates between autonomous sculpture and architectural exhibition display. A triangular wooden frame whose sides, in terms of proportion, correspond to the standard cinema formats of 4:3, 16:9, and Cinemascope, serves as a support for seven small-sized pencil drawings inflecting screens and projection arrangements in a network of delicate, accurately placed lines. Untitled 2007 paradigmatically reveals Vardag’s interest in both the cinematographic principle and art-immanent relationships: whereas the artist affirms technological necessities and conditions, he also provokes questions linked to perceptual experiences and unfulfilled expectations through transferring these issues to an exhibition context.

Georg Kargl, 2011 (translation: Wolfgang Astelbauer)

1)  Domenikus Müller, “Nadim Vardag. Im Reich der Projektion,” in: Parnass 4/2010, 108.