Nils Udo Presentation

Link to Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PO3wvjLQ3dDOM5h7TFTeuy59O5E7k6Xoj1jQ_R1nKQ4/edit?slide=id.p#slide=id.p

Nils-Udo is a German environmental artist best known for his large-scale, site-specific installations created from natural materials such as branches, leaves, berries, flowers, stones, and water. He began his work in the 1970s alongside the broader Land Art and environmental art movements, with his practice centered on collaboration with nature rather than domination over it. He takes forests, rivers, fields, and gardens and transforms them into temporary artistic spaces that emphasize the natural world.

Nils Udo, Calumets, 1990

Nils-Udo’s installations are all intentionally and fundamentally ephemeral. Many of his works are left exposed to weather, decay, and seasonal change, allowing nature itself to complete or dismantle the artwork over time. 

Nils Udo, Apple Tree, Snowballs, 1987

Photography also plays a role in Nils-Udo’s artistic process because his installations often exist only briefly before disappearing. The photographic image becomes both documentation and artistic extension, preserving moments of interaction between the human and the environment. As seen below, he also brings a very artistic eye to color and composition in these photos 

Nils Udo, Clemson Nest, 2005

Critics often interpret Nils-Udo’s work through the lens of ecocriticism and environmental ethics (although this is still only a small group of critics, as Udo is not widely written about). Rather than treating nature as raw material to be controlled, Nils-Udo's work approaches the landscape as a living collaborator. Through this philosophy, his art becomes both an aesthetic experience and an imperative for the viewer to confront ecological responsibility and their relationship to nature (and that is the main thing I want to say in my final project as well).

https://www.nils-udo.com/?lang=en  -Nils Udo's Website

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C8DGy8H6zg  -Nils Udo Lecturing at the Sculpture Network International Forum

Installation Mock Up

Over the reading period, I took a trip to Highcliff State Park and gathered a very large number of sticks, which are now in the trunk of my car (picture not included for lack of foresight since my car is in the Banta Bowl). I've also purchased 10 of these cinder blocks from Home Depot, so now I only need some paint to have all of my materials. I'm going to build picture frames out of these sticks and affix them among the trees (as seen below in red). Then I will build a sculpture with the cinder block where I've indicated the gray square in the photo. I'm not quite sure what this is going to look like, but I've put a photo of what I'm thinking along the lines of below. As I already mentioned in my proposal, the goal of my work will be to bring people's attention back to nature. The installation artist Olafur Eliasson says that "[Nature is] something we more frequently experience through mediation rather than firsthand" (Bishop 77), and I want to ultimately bring attention to that, even if it will still be mediated, but just mediated in a different way. 

Works Cited

Bishop, Claire. Installation Art: A Critical History. London: Tate Publishing, 2005.

Project Proposal

 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16yqwfy7h4gAl9Oc2SRgBwmephXEPyvKF1Wa3UTs4avY/edit?slide=id.g3dbd59b53f3_0_0#slide=id.g3dbd59b53f3_0_0

Currently, I'm certain my project will take place in nature and make that choice the primary impetus behind what I will try to say with my piece. I've narrowed it down to two locations (the woods below Trevor and the Lawe footbridge underpass), both of which have their own pros and cons and would require very different kinds of work in physical and spatial terms, albeit ultimately both would be similar thematically. For the material behind these proposed works, I want to combine natural (see slide one) and very unnatural materials (see slide two). I also want these two aspects to come together harmoniously in order to frame the space (for example, combining the ideas of Cornelia Konrads’s Passage with the Walmart picture frames). I will also be taking a more is less approach here; an important part of my ethos here is to make the work blend the natural with the work of art, and I think any heavy-handedness would shatter that tenuous project. What I will ultimately be trying to say with this work is something about curiosity, attention, and deep looking. I want to create a subtle and lasting piece that brings the rewards of whimsy and discovery to the discerning passerby, a work that very subtly transfigures nature into art in order to create an engagement with the viewer that brings them not just into the work, but primarily back into an engagement with nature. Thus, just like the Passage and the frames, it will create a gateway back into moments in nature that are so often ignored.

Objects in Space

 

Most of these scenes are taken in my much-loathed windowless dorm of Fox Commons. I will admit many of these photos are a bit all over the place, but I generally wanted to experiment with a space I’m in every day, and reconfigure my very familiar object in surreal or just funny ways. I am especially happy with the first picture, with my computer monitor in the shower. I think it captures silliness, a minimalist aesthetic, and a bit of ominousness all at once and is a fun image (if only I had any idea how to take a technically well-done photo). I think the biggest realization this exercise brought forth was how fixed the objects in my personal space really were. When I moved in in January and unpacked, I found a place for everything, and that became completely cemented. Before today, my computer monitor hadn’t moved an inch, but now it's been in the shower, how neat is that? I obviously knew everything could be manipulated like this, but just being able to have that vision, I think is really helpful, especially for me as, in my own art historically, I’ve been a looker and a renderer, not really a super active and disruptive maker, and I really had a lot of fun doing so.

The last few images are from my visit back home in Minneapolis over the weekend, and while I took many more photos of the Walker sculpture garden, I decided to only include one (my favorite one) so as not to be too basic. 

10 Spaces

 

Underside of Lawe St Footbridge

Path Under Trevor Hall

Lawe St Footbridge

These three spaces put nature right at the forefront, and the first two are my frontrunners right now for the space I would like to work with (doing something on the bridge would also be cool, but that is likely unfeasible). What I like about these is that they could blend the artistic and the natural in interesting ways, and they are also rather off the beaten path (especially the under-the-bridge spot, which you have to climb down the steep riverbank to see), and would create interesting moments of discovery that could serve to add intrigue to the space.

Wriston Pits

Briggs Patio

Hiett Patio

Slug Garden Fire Pit

These outdoor public spaces are very important to me personally, and I think they represent the best social parts of college life, but as I think you can see, they (especially the first two) are very sparse and could be interesting places for a bit of artistic exploration. I also think that overall, a lot of the spaces I'm really drawn to involve the river in some way, so that is definitely something I might want to work with for my final piece. 

Steitz Lounge corner

Youngchild/Steitz Upper Attrium

Wriston Coatroom

These first two spaces are places where I do the majority of my writing and studying, and while the plants are nice, I think they could have some tasteful and subtle interest injected into them. The Wriston bathroom coatroom is also a place on campus that I think could use some beautification and interest adding, and I also think I would have a better chance getting approved to use Wriston than other spaces. 

Three Objects

I’ve had this mug for almost 4 years, ever since I filled my dorm with a plethora of thrift store items in my freshman year in an attempt to make it slightly less prisoncell-esque. In those four years, it has become one of my favorite possessions (sorry for the sentimentality). It has a mystique and a mystery about its origin and who made it/why they did, and why it ended up in an Appleton thrift store. What I really like about objects like this is that they point very directly to a distinct story (with the eyes and it being in a thrift store), but that story is completely unknowable and always will be. 

While I took some more photos of this Freud-Winnie the Pooh pinata after I brought it back to my room, nothing really beats the way I originally found it. I think this object speaks to me in a similar way to the mug. It must have had a story (a very specific story), but it also must have outlived its usefulness (whatever that might have been). The whole idea of a forgotten or discarded item really can say a lot, from the Sigmund-pooh pinata to the free books in the library that no one checked out for twenty years, something about them has outlived their cultural usefulness, and while I might never know quite what that was, it still sparks something. 

                                                                      

These bird scissors came to me rather serendipitously as I was taking a walk right after our class on Wednesday. They were in the mud in the middle of city park, after washing them, I realized how high quality and beautiful they really were. I don’t have quite as much to say about these as my other two items, but the fact that I found such an odd object right after we finished class felt like fate, and I just had to include them.