Nikki de León (b. 1987) reconstructs from within dark.
Based between Cologne and Los Angeles, her practice is an act of architectural self-assertion and a reclaiming of personal history. Of German and Mexican-American heritage, de León draws upon her background in technical construction and fabrication to navigate the “limbo,” a space often defined by fractured history and the gaps of the unknown. Her work is not about building monuments, but about stabilizing the void. In this process, she finds certainty in uncertainty.
In her paintings, de León rejects the empty canvas in favor of a deliberate, absolute blackness from where she forces color to emerge as sharp, architectural hard-edge forms executed freehand with visceral precision. Her sculptural works, composed of industrial construction elements, exist in a state of precarious equilibrium. They are an expression of resilience: proof that stability is not an inheritance, but a strength built piece by piece.
De León studied Architecture and Interior Design, later honing her technical skills through professional work in metal fabrication and locksmithing. Her hybrid expertise, merging the industrial discipline of fabrication with the clarity of geometric abstraction, positions her work as a bridge between structural reality and existential restlessness. Her practice is an invitation to witness the resilient structures that emerge when color is built from darkness.
Artist Statement
” What began as a deconstruction of the unknown became a way to give new shape to the structures that live within. I grew up between languages, places, and stories that to me didn’t quite align, and eventually found a quiet certainty in what I couldn’t yet name, but could feel was building. There are places you return to. Not because you stayed, but because they’re somehow part of you, and you’re part of them.
So I gave them form, as they rise from unfamiliar ground, somewhere out of the dark, onto a new foundation. In words, in image, in space.
Like building compositions that don’t explain, but stand. Structures that feel right because they are built on newfound connection, not intention. Opening a space where weight and brightness coexist, and where their contrast becomes a formal kind of strength.”