Nils Udo: The Sicklecal Sculpture or Death and Renewal

Romantic Landscape 1992
Ludwig Forum fur Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany





Bavarian artist, Nils Udo has been making site-specific Land Art work since the 1960s. Abandoning the painting studio in favor of the natural landscape, Udo sought to dissolve the barrier between art and life and between man and nature. Working in Europe, he saw individuals' interaction with nature as destructive, ignorant to the cycles and processes of the natural world. Or, and much more destructive, this ignorance of the natural world extended into Romantic and Modern thought, romanticizing the "grove" or "forest" as a realm of realization and exploration, without recognizing the unalterable transformation of the physical landscape that ensued. The piece above, Romantic Landscape draws on historical tropes of the sublime in nature and literalizes them on a pedestal. Creating an artificial and architypal grove from natural materials, Udo manufactures an environment where people may interact with these stereotypes. The pedestal highlights the elevated, and ultimately self destructive nature of these ideas--the landscape cannot grow much further than the platform. The landscape exists as a fairytale environment, but as the viewers alter the landscape with their presence, the reality of spoiled nature and the effects of these destructive traditions becomes clear--man overcoming nature, the romantic sublime. The piece creates an environment where people recognize their symbiotic relationship with nature, whether in the romantic grove or modern city. This contrast between using natural materials while simultaneously spoiling their purity is, as Udo says, the inherent contradiction that flows through his practice.

-Sam Korman