Images courtesy of Fridericianum, Kassel. Photos by Nils Klinger.
The division of nature and culture is obsolete. Nature is us and everything that surrounds us. Nature does and becomes; nature is subject and material at the same time. The exhibition nature after nature presents artistic works using materials that surround us and constitute nature. Differentiations between synthetic and organic, man-made and natural are rejected. A nature after nature, which disassociates itself from an idealized and ideologized term and must be considered anew.
Fibreglass, resin, sand and litter form puddles of tar (Marlie Mul). Transparent cushions made of flexible plastic sheeting and filled with water, steel and latex trigger processes between the materials (Olga Balema). The digital scan of the skin of a copperhead snake is printed with light onto copper-clad plastic. A linguistically and pictorially transformed nature is being dissected (Sam Lewitt). Carpet, Dibond panels, sheet metal and rubber form an agricultural landscape (Nora Schultz).
The artists in the nature after nature exhibition concern themselves with a nature that firmly bears the mark of social and economic structures. A nature composed of materials like epoxies, aluminium or concrete; a nature which is the fundamental component of technologies and is revealed in chemical as well as physical processes. A nature that impacts beyond its sensory manifestations and whose varied interactions undermine our notions of time and space.
The exhibition demonstrates a nature after nature that, in its complex, global transformations, can only be grasped and comprehended in fragments.