And just when the world most needed reassurance and sustenance, Nickou’s paintings remind us of why, for centuries, the Sonnenblume has so often been a practical sacrament for spiritual seekers. As a vehicle for mystic transport, the sunflower inspires Nickou’s contemplation of the imponderable depths. Nickou gives us a pageant of the eternal and the ephemeral. Nickou gives us the sunflower as festive, the sunflower as partying. The sunflower as sad, the sunflower as solitary.
SUNFLOWERS drawings and paintings 
SUNFLOWERS drawings and paintings
The sunflower who is bright. The sunflower who is bleak. She gives us the sunflower, precise and pristine. She gives us the sunflower, crude and sloppy. Maybe this sunflower doesn’t have her shit together yet, and maybe she never will? Maybe this sunflower is quite pleased with herself. Let her drop her sexy seeds! Let her grow ancient like a toothless mouth. Let her be abstracted and undulated, social or withdrawn. The sunflower knows no limits. Not only soothingly traditional, but also jarringly contemporary, this collection is—like the very sunflower who is Nickou’s subject—a world-weary traveling companion, joining us in our life’s journey, toward whatever unknown awaits beyond death. Nickou gives us, finally, the sunflower.
Exhibition: SUNFLOWERS drawings and paintings by Lauren Nickou
Exhibition duration: Oct 14-28 2022
Vernissage: Friday Oct 14 7pm
Finissage: Friday Oct 28 7pm
Address and contact:
WasserWasser³
Viktorgasse 22 / Weyringergasse 36
1040 Wien
www.wasserwasser.at
Lauren Nickou – www.nickou.net
A.W. Strouse is the author of Form and Foreskin (Fordham University Press, 2021) and Gender Trouble Couplets (punctum, 2019). His website is www.awstrouse.com