Nils-Udo

By establishing “a spiritual and aesthetic dialogue” with nature, Nils-Udo keeps track of his ephemeral installations and living sculptures through photography. A subtle thaumaturge, playing with the elements, leaves and flowers, reflections and shadows, he shows a rethought concept of nature, which has been gently reconstructed in the asserted aim of achieving “what is possible and latent in nature” and “to literally make real what has never existed but has always been present, utopia becomes reality”.

Nils-Udo

 

 

Born in Bavaria in 1937. He studied graphic arts in Nuremberg. He gave up painting in 1972, believing it to be an artificial way of handling nature and started to work, in his own words, at the source itself.

“Sketching with flowers. Painting with clouds. Writing with water. Tracing the May wind, the path of a falling leaf. Working for a thunderstorm. Awaiting a glacier. Directing water and light... Counting a forest and a meadow....”

 

He borrows his materials from nature. Anything to do with plants or minerals is an excuse to create: snow, flowers, leaves, berries, forests, water, stones and deserts. He rarely uses inanimate objects, preferring living subjects, which are constantly developing and changing. Subject to the laws of nature, the work of art itself becomes alive. The artist asserts that he thereby establishes a “spiritual and aesthetic dialogue” with nature, his only point of contact.

 

From installation to sculpture or photography, Nils Udo’s main work values this interaction, this interaction with nature, land of experience, when man acting upon his environment is aware of acting upon himself.