The reciprocal relationship between man and nature has always preoccupied the artist Julius von Bismarck. In his new exhibition, with which the Berlinische Galerie reopens today after a three-month closure for renovation work, he combines his studies of nature with biographical questions for the first time: an oversized cloth with drawings of a water surface leads visitors into the show. It shows the so-called Bismarck Sea in the Pacific Ocean and symbolizes the wide circles Bismarck’s family history draws in the German colonial past. Climate change and its consequences are also omnipresent in the work. His new series “I like the flowers” deals with the colonial practice of the herbarium, in which dried, pressed plants define the space as sculpture. The work is reminiscent of houseplants with which we decorate our homes. It is also to be understood as a commentary on the exoticizing representation with which some places in this world are stylized into places of longing.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a life-size giraffe and a scaled-down version of Bremen’s equestrian statue of Otto von Bismarck. Like the children’s toy of the spinning figurine, both figures are composed of individual limbs that allow the figures to collapse in on themselves and rise up again. All of the works are thus connected by the question of how man deals with nature, and which plants, animals and parts of the earth he considers worth protecting and which he does not. With his exhibition, Bismarck provides us with refreshing food for thought, allowing us to take a critical look at the Anthropocene without lecturing – always aware that in the end it is nature that has the upper hand.
Text: Laura Storfner / Credit: Julius von Bismarck; alexander levy, Berlin, and Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
Berlinische Galerie, Alte Jakobstr.124-128, 10969 Berlin–Kreuzberg; map
“Julius von Bismarck: When Platitudes Become Form” 26.05.–14.08.2023 Wed–Mon 10–18h. Admission 10 Euro/6 Euro reduced.
@berlinischegalerie
