Exhibition opening - CONSTRUCTED NATURE

CONSTRUCTED NATURE
Dana Meyer, Nelly Schmücking & Matthias Garff
Opening: Wed, 10.06.26, 18:30
Imperial Stables Bad Ischl

Nature is often seen as the antithesis of culture - as pristine and untouched. But this separation has long since fallen short: today, nature is observed, measured, used, protected and threatened. And staged. It no longer appears as an immediate given, but is rather in a state of constant mediation. This is where the exhibition Constructed Nature comes in. The animal depictions by Dana Meyer, Nelly Schmücking and Matthias Garff show the animal not as a mere motif, but as a counterpart. It becomes a mirror of our perception and our responsibility towards living things.

The exhibition location Bad Ischl reinforces this question. The idyllic Salzkammergut landscape is both a natural and cultural space, historically shaped by use, aestheticization and appropriation, visible, for example, in the imperial villa with its hunting trophies. Nature always appears here as a designed and interpreted reality. The three artistic positions make this construction visible in different ways: Meyer's steel sculptures combine hardness with lively tension, Schmücking's works condense anatomical precision into an aesthetic "equivalent" of the animal, and Garff creates fragile, haunting creatures of an environment shaped by man from found objects. This creates a space in which the relationship between humans and animals is renegotiated. Constructed Nature shows: Nature is not a counter-world outside of us, but always part of a cultural fabric - and thus also an expression of our responsibility for the world that we help to shape.