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| Der Geheime Garten der Nachtigall |
Claas Gutsche & Sebastian Nebe
12.03. - 02.05.2010
Reception with the artists: Friday, 12.03., 19-22 h
Introduction: Dr. Ralf F. Hartmann
“Blair Witch Project” or the fairy tale forest of the brothers Grimm – the forest remains an anarchic island amidst civilization. Place for the mysterious and foreboding. Simultaneously refuge from noise of urban routine and canvas for one’s mental state.
In the first joint exhibition of the graduates Sebastian Nebe (*1982, HGB Leipzig) and Claas Gutsche (*1982, Royal College London) such a place develops far from established romantic perceptions at Galerie Wagner + Partner.
The large-scale paintings in oil on paper by Sebastian Nebe show scraggy sections of forest and relics of civilization. In their dimensions the works convey a feeling of standing in the forest, though without orientation. Graphically exaggerated, the arrangements are unsettling. As already in his installation “Die Schwarze Hütte” (The Black Hut), exhibited in the gallery of the HGB Leipzig in 2009, Nebe designs a disquieting reality of the forest, a faintly illuminated twilight zone.
Claas Gutsche also turns his eye to the border region between civilization and nature. His series “suburbia” are sombre linoleum and woodcuts that make the unsettling nature of this no man’s land palpable. Under the surface of idyllic places hide bygone and mysterious things. This metaphorical charge continues in his bronze objects. Barren branches here, lost or forgotten objects there, a bracelet, a bird’s nest – all these elements permeate and transform the gallery space.
Embedded in a gesamtkunstwerk the works of both artists Claas Gutsche and Sebastian Nebe tell each their own mysterious stories and together turn the gallery into “The Nightingale’s Secret Garden”.
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| Ilka Halso |
Restoration
15.01.- 06.03.2010
Weather has become “climate”, climate has turned into “climate crisis” – an unstoppable threat of our natural environment has been a global discussion topic for years. The internationally renowned Finnish artist Ilkka Halso (*1965 ) has been dealing with healing and rescue of endangered nature in his work for the best part of a decade. His photographic interventions are therefore not just the Finnish sequel of the “Landart”, developed in the USA in the 1960s, but also a reaction to our changing planet.
The exhibition at Galerie Wagner + Partner aims to trace Halso’s aesthetic approach of rescuing nature. In the works of the series “Restoration” the artist develops and builds pseudo-scientific arrangements such as scaffolding trees with transparent gauze and illuminating them. Nature is given “treatment” as if in a field hospital, the damaged patient receives medical care. All photographs are made by night, when nature, so to speak is getting a good night’s sleep.
The later series “Museum of Nature” shows a shift in this healing approach. Nature now is no longer being healed, it is being “rescued”. The viewer finds trees and whole landscapes in glass pavilions. Like a work of art, nature is stored and conserved in a museum.
Has the patient become a mummy? This question must remain unanswered. While Ilkka Halso interferes directly with nature in his series restoration (photographic installation), he constructs his nature-protecting buildings by computer (digital construction) in the museum series. No real answer is given to whether this eases or increases the threat. Still, on an aesthetic level this approach of the artist remains appealing. |
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