The sculptures by Nicola Ukic reach out for space and our attention. And it the »measure of man is the measure of all things«, it makes one wonder as bodily counterpart how gigantic his works do seem. Curiously the viewer gropes his way around the sculptures, not only finding out about their different views and colors, but experiencing first their different, in fact completely different appearances. Marble, stony shimmering surfaces there, getting thinner while tapering to a point, elsewhere form is reaching out into space, cautiously, fragile, almost like made out of paper! Coat or content, body, color, line or form, weight or lightness define themselves always anew. Material puffs itself up, to soon calm down again. What remains is the restlessness inside the viewer.

The installation at the Museum gegenstandsfreier Kunst is called »Testis«; »witnesses« are the ever so different, spherical creations spreading themselves out on the floor, beginning a life of their own. Blossom, vitality and decay in one and the same form show life. The distinct eerie about it being that there remains no deceptive feeling. Some of the works still change until up to halfa year after their being made. And hence the sculptures turn into witnesses of human existence.

With each detail Ukic reacts directly to the space. He makes his works reach out into it in order to immediately describe it anew. Two single bodies are combined with each other. It's lapping out of one sphere like an unmbilical cord, softly and formable seeking its opposite. The smooth, floating surface shows traces of its being processed. It is cast, it is true, but it doesn't seem hard or solidified in the process of drying. Sneaker profiles, traces, memories of its formation, grooves, dusty depositions of color or fissures. For the artist graphic moments which in form and color are part of the work, at the same time are witnesses. Not all of them have the good fortune of the connection - two more shapes, cold and gray and shriveled getting lonesome next to it.

Like carelessly thrown down or artfully draped, a black plastic foil is lying next to the wall; a final chord for an exciting space; the floor as painting and drawing surface; as a Zen garden where there's no nature, where everything is deliberate, shaped and composed by the hand of man.

A space which is being absorbed by the wall, an inversion on top of the surface. Seven plastic foils of different widths are hanging here. Overlaps reflecting, deepening, extending, enlarging, expanding the surrounding space with its figures. The glossy material takes in its counterpart, absorbs it, shows it. The lamps are drawing white-glaring lines onto the transparent surface - wall, plastic foil, space - a play without boundaries, a drawing sketching, attesting the extant. A briet, tleeting glance of the sun, lighting up the whole range of spectral colors on the plastic foil.

Colortulness in all its subtleties, subdued or sonorous, is omnipresent. In three small, extremely fraqile reliefs also on the walls. Ukic processes felt tips. He disassembles them, takes the transparent Cores, pulls the color-carrying parts, the fibers out of them and assembles them anew. He squirts water through them, by which color residues are being secreted like with watercolors, be it here onto the wall or elsewhere onto paper, canvas or a solid block of wood. The woolen tangle, the former inner life appears sometimes pale, sometimes bright and soaked in color. Here, it floats absolutely fragile on the wall: feathers, freedom, flying, a moment's touch, its tleeting nature seems to be symbolized.

Again, Ukic remains true to the idea to breathe new life into an actually purpose-oriented material through reduction to the original and its mere appearance.

And everywhere lingers time. The time that determines change, awakening and passing. Time of the fleeting moment, time of lingering. The good time that makes beauty grow, and bad time making wilt what's in blossom.

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