SOME THINGS HAPPEN ALL AT ONCE
Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen, Germany
SOLO | 29 January - 3 April 2016
Mountains of plastic, mists of chemical substances, fibreglass trees: the Zeppelin Museum is the first museum in Germany to host an exhibition by Mariele Neudecker.
In her work Neudecker examines the contemporary concept of landscapes and the changing perception of landscapes, nature, and technology on the basis of the philosophical aesthetics of Romanticism. At a time when the consequences of climate change are becoming threateningly apparent, thus overshadowing our notions of “idyllic nature”, Neudecker presents ambiguous renderings of our culturally coded yearnings in the shape of sound installations, video documentaries, sculptures, photographs, and artistic re-enactments. They are defined by contradictions and changing perspectives: a sunrise and a sunset become one by means of simultaneous recording, miniaturised mountains materialise out of artificial mists in aquariums on high pedestals, and life-size casts of tree trunks rise up from cubic pedestals. Large becomes small, small becomes large, and the asynchronous becomes synchronous: Some Things Happen All at Once. Neudecker is interested in “nature beyond landscape”. She decodes the concept of landscape as an ideal intellectual and philosophical construction and dissects it into its representational components. In this way, she confronts visitors not only with subjective wishes and yearnings, but also with the cracks in the vision of an “idyllic world”: the subjective experience of the beautiful and sublime becomes ambivalent in a technoid illusionary space: “I am often confronted with contradictory situations in which two opposing suggestions or ‘arguments’ come together: objectivity versus subjectivity, temptation versus frustration – the ongoing dilemma of all contemporary theories.” (Quote Mariele Neudecker) <back to exhibitions |