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In ‘Nigredo’, Constantin Schlachter combines painting with his original practice, photography. In the privacy of his studio, he paints small formats (4x5 inches) in watercolor on paper. These images are then used as negatives and printed in the darkroom on chromogenic paper. In this process, the artist reverses the color values and densities of his paintings. 

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The printing process produces a positive from a negative, here darkness becomes light and vice versa. In the same way, red becomes cyan, green-magenta and yellow-blue. This technique also allowed him to create without the camera. From now on, the light would freeze the pigments of the paint directly onto the photographic paper, using a color enlarger. 

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The title of this series comes from alchemy. It refers to the first stage of the Great Work, also known as the ‘Work in Black’. For the alchemist, this involves confronting the Shadow within himself, by looking inwards. In this way, he gains access to his inner gold, his soul. Constantin Schlachter interprets this phase of the alchemical quest as a necessary letting go, through which he opens a window onto his spirit, to visit this inner landscape. 

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With their telluric and cosmic aspects, these prints invite the viewer into a meditative and contemplative state, where everyone is free to project their own inner world. This invitation is extended by a spontaneous hanging, in which the emotive images interact with each other according to the artist’s sensibility. 

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‘We all dream of travelling through the universe, but isn’t the universe within us?’ This was the question that Novalis used to sum up his definition of infinity in 1798.