Philipp Modersohn—Unclosure

»Truly good and, indeed, divine things are alive and active outside you and should be let in to work their changes. Such incursions formally instruct and enrich our lives in society (...).«
Anne Carson, ›Eros the Bittersweet‹, 1986

In his sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, German artist Philipp Modersohn (*1986) is showing a site-specific installation with new sculptural works. In his multidisciplinary practice, Philipp Modersohn highlights the vibrancy of all terrestrial matter. In his animated films, various non-human, often inorganic actors appear, stones, shells, plastics, etc., which tell of their existence and of their view of things, not least in relation to the human influence on their respective habitats. In his sculptures, which are mainly made of sediments and other originally earthbound materials, Modersohn emphasises the beauty of the fragile, drawing on the decisive shaping forces on our planet: pressure and heat. Moreover, in both his sculptures and his films, Modersohn often makes use of contemporary appropriation of Baroque motifs to question the future of art-making in the age of the late Anthropocene.

Parallel to the exhibition Philipp Modersohn's first comprehensive monograph ›Attitudes of Stone‹ is published by Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite, Berlin, edited by Wilma Lukatsch and the Kunstverein Oldenburg. The book contains short poetic and theoretical contributions by authors from various professions, pseudo-scientific diagrams, and an overview of the artist's previous site-specific installations and other works—creating a horizontal dialogue with collaborators as well as with the objects and processes themselves.