A Poison Tree

Schiefe Zähne is pleased to present A Poison Tree, the second exhibition by Nikolas Gambaroff (b. 1979) at the gallery. Known for a practice that persistently interrogates the structures of authorship, language, and the unstable cultural role of painting, Gambaroff shows a new body of work that deepens his ongoing engagement with the limits and ruptures of visual meaning. In these new paintings, Gambaroff pushes his investigation of the painted surface as both an image and an object – an interface where cultural scripts, personal gestures, and material contingencies collide. Working through the slippage between intention and accident, legibility and obstruction, he stages painting as a site where competing systems – linguistic, economic, technological – struggle for coherence. Painting becomes a field in which thinking takes form, detours, and doubles back on itself. The paintings behave less like resolved images and more like provisional stages where forms appear, withdraw, and reassert themselves. Gambaroff’s interests echo in the image as a site of enactment - an arena in which roles, symbols, and material forces enter negotiation. The works form a constellation of interdependent propositions: gestures reappear in altered form, structures migrate between canvases, and accidents become anchors. In refusing stability, they reflect a broader condition in contemporary life, one in which certainty dissolves and meaning emerges only through interrelations. Here, the paintings act as propositions – open-ended structures that test how an image can be read, circulated, and ultimately claimed. They reveal a sustained concern with the categorization and commodification of artistic identities and practices, yet resist easy assimilation into its economies of recognition. Nikolas Gambaroff studied at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and received his MFA from Bard College in New York. He has held teaching positions at UCLA and the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, and is currently Professor of Painting at the Kunsthochschule Mainz. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gropius Bau, Berlin; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Kluft at Schiefe Zähne, Berlin; The Last Days of Mankind at The Kitchen, New York; Auction of Souls (with Ei Arakawa) at Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna; and The Truce Hurts at Overduin & Co., Los Angeles.