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 Nature’s program contains the plan for its own transformation, the American philosopher of science Kevin Kelly tells us with undisguised neobiologism. This author, inspired by the biotechnological revolution of the nineties, considers the reconstruction, the deliberate building anew of nature to be not only possible, but even necessary and, to a certain extent, desirable. The criteria of the natural as the originally born or become, as the root of this word signifies, are today apparently being subjected to a fundamental transformation. The change in paradigm is carried out in a cultural context, which increasingly regards nature itself quite clearly to be a historically mutable concept. Characteristically, the committment to the preservation of nature in Europe is directed, for example, mostly at areas which on the other hand are termed cultural landscapes, in which the need for a certain historical form of nature is expressed. Nearly no one would come up with the idea for demanding a prehistoric natural condition, because in this he would have to basically leave all culture behind and call the project of human civilization itself into question. Besides this, the frame of thought responsible for rethinking the concept of nature sharpens our awareness of the fact that our idea of nature – as well as of history – is and indeed always was a construct born out of many different needs.
Olaf Nicolai’s work connects, in a more commentatory than confirmatory manner, the aesthetic needs – which have stood behind the culturally influenced image of nature since Romanticism – with the technological possibilities of their realization in the present, for an interplay has existed between both ever since. The floral pattern, similar to moving wallpaper, which the video beamer projects onto the walls, reminds one perhaps most obviously that designed nature has already been a part of the interior of our living spaces for a very long time. Already in the eighteenth century, fabrics elaborately printed with fantastic plants were a widespread wall decoration; plant ornaments are obviously much older and belong to the earliest decorative elements known. The projected tendrils visually create, as does the sound of bird chirping acoustically, a space around the large-scale images portraying small plants on lava stones, miniature landscapes which the artist has created in collaboration with a botanist under artificial light. Their tropical form and colors are captivating, illuminations in the exhibition space.
Here, nature can be experienced in threefold aesthetic formation: the ornament, eternally reaching upwards, as its abstraction; the bird’s song, as it is usually heard in bushes and trees, as a simulation; and the inserted enlargements of artificial miniature flora as a photographic fiction of a future landscape feeling which at the same time refers to the familiar images of past vegetative worlds.
Referring to one another, these elements can, as is the case in a symbol, be understood as past, present and future – for abstraction, by means of which humans lay claim to their environment, first created the need to secure oneself in relation to nature in an accordingly friendly situation via simulation. Ultimately, this need will only be able to be fulfilled in a totally constructed “nature”. The aesthetic enjoyment of having all these forms interlocking allows the viewer of Nicolai’s conceptual installation of a nature of varying design also realize, perhaps, that meaning frequently follows the sensuality of natural perception, but that needs always precede it.
Olaf Nicolai
- Born 1962 in Halle an der Saale
- 1983 - 88 Studium der Germanistik
- Lives and works in Berlin and Leipzig
Scholarship and Prices (Selection):
- 1993 Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes
- 1996 Botho-Graef-Kunstpreis der Stadt Jena
Stipendium Villa Massimo in Rom
- 1998 Arbeitsstipendium der Western Front, Vancouver
P.S.1 Stipendium, New York
Solo exhibitions (Selection)
- 1998 Western Front, Vancouver (CAN)
Galerie EIGEN+ART, Berlin
Kunstverein Ulm, Ulm
- 1997 Blind Date, Werkstatt Lothringer Strasse, München (mit Ann Lislegard)*
Interieur/Landschaft, Galerie C.Nagel, Köln (mit Matthias Hoch)
Nature is a workshop, Galerie SKUC, Ljubljana; Salon, Celje (Slowenien)
Projektor, Städtisches Kunstmuseum Spendhaus, Reutlingen (mit Carsten Nicolai)*
- 1996 Pflanze Interieur, Galerie Hohenthal and Bergen, Köln*
Interieur/Souvenir, Galerie EIGEN+ART, Berlin
- 1995 Die Neuaufteilung der Welt, Kunstverein Göttingen (mit Carsten Nicolai)*
Interieur, Galerie EIGEN+ART, Leipzig
Schnitt Muster, Institut für moderne Kunst, Nürnberg
- 1994 Sammlers Blick, Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg*
TABLEAU/SPEICHER, Grassi-Museum, Leipzig*
private mix, Galerie EIGEN+ART, Berlin
- 1993 INSCHRIFT, Installation Messehofpassagen, Leipzig*
Hortus/Präparat, Galerie Fabian Walter, Basel*
Galerie Triangle, Bordeaux (F)
Group exhibitions (Selection)
- 1998 Collection 98, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig
projects/installations, P.S.1 Museum, Long Island City, New York (USA)
post naturam/Nach der Natur, Städtische Ausstellungshalle am Hawerkamp, Münster; Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt*
Landschaft. Die Spur des Sublimen, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel; Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck (A); Esbjerg Kunstmuseum, Esbjerg (DK)*
Aufriß, Brandenburgische Kunstsammlungen, Cottbus*
- 1997 Deep Storage, Kulturforum Berlin, Berlin*
Heaven, P.S.1 Museum, Long Island City,
New York (USA)
In medias res, Atatürk Kulturzentrum/Dolmabahe Palast, Istanbul (TR)*
group show, Galerie EIGEN+ART, Berlin
documenta X, Kassel*
Pro Lidice, Prag (CZ)*
Letter and Event, Apex Art, New York (USA)*
- 1996 Kunst auf der Neuen Messe Leipzig, Leipzig*
nach weimar, Kunstsammlung zu Weimar, Weimar*
Model/Salon, Clocktower Gallery/P.S.1 Museum, New York (USA)
Langsdorff Revisita, Sao Paolo (Brasilien)*
- 1995 Im Raum der Erinnerung, Neuer Kunstverein, Aschaffenburg*
Westchor Ostportal. Marstall, Berlin; Kunsthalle, Dresden; Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn*
- 1994 Imaginäres Hotel, Kunsthalle Elsterpark, Leipzig*
WELT-MORAL, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (CH)*
- 1993 Cadavre exquise, The Drawing Center, New York (USA)*
Sammlung Neue Meister, Albertinum, Dresden
Galerie EIGEN+ART, New York (USA)
[Gunda Förster] [Hans Hemmert] [Sabine Hornig] [York der Knöfel] [Michel Majerus]
[Antje Majewski] [Olaf Nicolai] [Manfred Pernice] [Daniel Richter]
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