NEGOTIATIONS
MARTINA NEHRLING
May 28th – June 25th, 2022
In this body of work, Nehrling has no fear of color, creating the stunning abstractions she is best known for. Bold short stripes cut across the canvas, composing a crescendo of hues that sit together neatly while demanding to be understood. Peeking through the thicket of lines are multicolored iridescent fogs asking the question “What if?”.
Enter our virtual exhibition
or scroll below to view each of the works in the exhibiton.

The Artist and her dog Chaplin.
“Seduced by the formal complexity of color, I revel in its emotive slipperiness and enjoy mining its controversial decorativeness. The inextricability of these aspects unique to color continually spurs my engagement. Tuned to the vivid and continuous absurd disparities of daily life, I weave visual rhythms—resonant, discordant, muscular, mellifluous—in patterns akin to currents and eddies, note taking, list making, pixilation and mapping.“
– Martina Nehrling, Artist
In a compositional language of maximalism, Nehrling’s work reflects our abundant access to information and entertainment that is at once the privilege and burden of contemporary life. The era of social media and rabid consumption of streaming content has amplified the 24 hour news cycle. Intensified political divisions, the pandemic, and her own aging further raise the stakes involved in the constant decision making of daily life.
With an almost synesthesic quality Nehrling’s compositions explore visual rhyming – the points and counterpoints of chromaticity strike chords and discords. There is a thrilling and joyful feeling of suspension and levitation in these pieces. They express exuberance, fear, delight and hysteria. There is a discernible vocabulary of flexibility and endlessness in the way the colors mingle and merge.
“I use multiple distinct brushstrokes for their staccato quality and graphic directness, and employ highly saturated chroma for its insistence, its unapologetic hysteria, its mirth and its madness. With this tensile language I explore what it means to be here, musing meditatively or ranting in lush celebration, high-pitched lament, or raucous rebellion.“
– Martina Nehrling, Artist

POINT – framed
2018
acrylic on montval
16 x 12″

BRAINFOG
2021
acrylic on montval
16 x 12″

CRACKED
2021
acrylic on montval
16 x 12″
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Biography CV Statement
Martina Nehrling is a Chicago-based artist who received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MFA from the University of Chicago. She has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Lake Forest College, and for the Associated Colleges of the Midwest Chicago Arts Program.








