Constructed Nature – Exhibition

11.06–31.10.26 Kaiserliche Stallungen Bad Ischl/ Access via Götz-Straße

Curator's guided tour with Sara Tröster Klemm Thu, 11.06.26, 16:00 | Sat, 31.10.26, 16:00

Nature is often seen as the opposite of culture – as primal and untouched. Yet this distinction has long since fallen short: nature is observed, measured, used, protected, threatened, and staged. It no longer appears as an immediate given, but rather exists in a state of constant mediation. This is where the exhibition *Constructed Nature* begins.

The animal depictions by Dana Meyer, Nelly Schmücking, and Matthias Garff present the animal not as a mere motif, but as a counterpart. It becomes a mirror of our perception and our responsibility toward the living.

The exhibition venue Bad Ischl amplifies this questioning. The scenically idyllic Salzkammergut is simultaneously a natural and cultural space, historically shaped by use, aestheticization, and appropriation – visible, for instance, in the Kaiservilla with its hunting trophies. Here, nature always also appears as a designed and interpreted reality.

The three artistic positions reveal this construction in different ways: Meyer's steel sculptures combine hardness with living tension; Schmücking's works condense anatomical precision into an aesthetic "equivalent" of the animal; and Garff creates fragile, haunting creatures of a human-shaped environment from found objects. A space emerges in which the relationship between humans and animals is renegotiated.

*Constructed Nature* shows: nature is not a counterworld outside of us, but always part of a cultural fabric – and thus also an expression of our responsibility for the world we help shape.

Curated by Sara Tröster Klemm