Wildnis

About

Here the terminology of wilderness as a realm untouched by human hands, a romantic haven or a place of longing, that can’t be found anymore is being opposed by different concepts. Thus places and areas are also being named wilderness if a counter-world to any cultural Prinzipal of classification is being assigned to these places or areas: Wilderness as something wildly sprawling, outlandish, unexpected that must be discovered and pierced. Big cities for example are being searched for places where nature grows unhindered. Also the negative meaning of wilderness as something desolate, degenerativ , as it shows in the denaturation of nature, the obstruction of spaces and their neglect.

Tine Benz deals with the energy of urban and futuristic appearing sites, but also with the hidden, secret places for whom she develops irritating landforms. Out of the 
depth of graphical material, collages of unreal urban areas and landscapes arise, that sometimes appear geometrical and sometimes surreal. They seem to be 
the stage for an unsaid, at least vague plot. In her paintings Tine Benz creates fantastic urban spaces and landforms. Almost always deserted, cold and raw but 
also of alluring color and irritating perspective, the paintings are situated somewhere between reality and fiction.

Wolfgang Flad uses conventional standard construction wood and papier mâché to craft organically intertwined and skeleton like sculptures referencing historic artists 
like Brancusi or Arp. Just like Guiseppe Penone’s tree trunk sculptures that apparently turn back time and try to bring the delicate plantlet back to life in a beam, the roof 
battens with their rank growth in combination with the papier mâché become an organic ensemble, a continually growing or sprawling entity that seems to live and grow.

In the shown work of Elisa Haug plains and geometrical forms build landscapes. The series "Gebäude Im Nebel" (Buildings In The Fog) deals with places that are 
no longer in use. These waste lands still show remains of their utilization, like abandoned buildings. However their original function does not show anymore. A decay and vegetation process has set in for quite a while. Nature spreads in a thicketly manner, blocks the sight and slowly lets human traces vanish. Everywhere grass, shrubbery, and trees sprawl. Landscapes and Buildings dissolve into abstract foggy color fields.

In his works Matthias Moravek deals with strategies of discovering, conquering and occupying territories, regions and continents. The white spaces symbolize the presence and absence of the actors and fortify the function of the pictures as places of longing. The contradiction between temporary architectures, like huts or tents, and this partly framing partly threatening nature plays a role in many of his works. In his recent dioramas, that he sees as an orchestration of nature and landscape, Matthias Moravek is interested in the artificial picture of nature as well as the layering of content and the formal layering of the scenerylike replicas of a cutout wilderness that thus enter an urban shaped museum.