Carsten Nicolai: Parallel Lines Cross at Infinity

Carsten Nicolai's stimulating audio-visual art challenges our perception and worldview. This book explores the work of the internationally renowned German artist.

Art is freedom. Everything is possible. Carsten Nicolai creates his work according to the strict application of his very own rules — and has established an impressively clear artistic perspective. Parallel Lines Cross at Infinity showcases Nicolai’s fascinating artwork from the past ten years, which explores the boundaries and intersections between art, nature, and science.

Carsten Nicolai uses patterns, series, codes, grids, mathematical equations, televisions, computers, neon tubes, and other devices. He visualizes phenomena that are usually invisible to the human eye, such as magnetic fields, and works with and against gravity. Nicolai considers the world to be his laboratory and his art can be seen as his experiments. In the examples featured in Parallel Lines Cross at Infinity, he analyzes, fragments, and condenses data and images in order to give his audience direct access to highly complex processes of time, space, and sound. Nicolai visually structures even the greatest chaos and his results are aesthetically brilliant.

Parallel Lines Cross at Infinity offers a wealth of inspiration for anyone interested in avant-garde art, mathematics, science, experimental music, and film, as well as conceptual thinking and design.

About the Authors:

Born in East Germany in 1965, Carsten Nicolai is one of the most important artists of the contemporary avant-garde. His work has been shown at documenta in 1997 and the Venice Biennale in 2001. It was the subject of an extensive solo exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in 2005-2006. Nicolai has also done guest performances with his audio-visual art at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.