Mathias Kessler: Nowhere to Be Found

The work of Mathias Kessler (*1968) critiques and re-imagines the contemporary concept of nature. Quoting from art history, philosophy, and ecopolitical debates, he restages representations of natural processes with humor and gravitas. Romantic painting, land art, and digital renderings compete and collide in order to unhinge familiar oppositions: nature/culture; representation/experience; ideology/aesthetics. For example, the viewer does not know whether the images are photographs of a spectacle of nature or perhaps digitalized artificial landscapes: in the installation The Sea of Ice, there is a picture featuring icebergs as lifeless Hollywood sets staged in wan light, and the viewer is invited to combine looking at the miniature reproduction of a masterpiece in the freezer of a refrigerator with a sip from a bottle of the beer cooling in the lower compartment. Exhibition: Kunsthal Rotterdam 12.9.-13.12.2015