Permanent Collection
Mariele NEUDECKER
With extraordinary precision, assembled with life casts, Neudecker has recreated a piece of forest, as if it were a chunk cut out of an actual woodland. Path and tree stump serve as palpable vestiges of human presence, and the work’s cropped height above the floor makes it impossible to grasp the entire scene. The theatrical lighting illuminating a shaft in the grove alludes to the human desire to see through natural darkness by bringing in light, yet conversely has the effect of doubly emphasizing the depth of the darkness, and evokes the sense of the sublime in the silent nighttime forest. In This Thing Called Darkness the ambiguous perceptions humans have toward landscape and our natural environment are not difficult to discem.
Photo: Oyamada Kuniya
Courtesy the artist with the kind support of the Forestry Commission, Bedgebury Pinetum, England
Mariele NEUDECKER
Mariele Neudecker was born 1965 in Düsseldorf, Germany and studied art in Germany, Ireland and the UK. She is now based in Bristol, UK. Neudecker is Professor and Research Fellow at Bath Spa University, Fellow for CERN’s Visiting Artists Programme and on the European Commission’s JRC Art & Science advisory panel. Her practice investigates the thresholds of human experience, testing our perception of natural and technological worlds. Her solo exhibitions include ” Until Now ” at the Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, UK, 2000), “Over and Over, Again and Again” at Tate St Ives and Tate Britain (UK, 2004-05), “Hinterland” at the Kunstmuseum Trondheim (Norway, 2010) and “Some Things Happen All At Once” at the Zeppelin Museum (Friedrichshafen, Germany, 2016). She has also shown widely in international group exhibitions.
2008
Mixed media
950×560×470 cm
Mariele Neudecker interview （ PDF ）
interviewer ： Toyama Aruma ( Towada Art Center )
July 22, 2022
