Constructed Nature – Exhibition

Date: 11.06–31.10.26 Venue: 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 original and untouched. Yet this distinction has long fallen short: nature is today 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 an 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 both a natural and a cultural space, historically shaped by use, aestheticization, and appropriation – visible, for example, in the Kaiservilla with its hunting trophies. Nature here always appears as a designed and interpreted reality as well. The three artistic positions make this construction visible in different ways: Meyer's steel sculptures combine hardness with lively tension, Schmücking's works condense anatomical precision into an aesthetic "equivalent" of the animal, and Garff creates fragile, haunting creatures from found objects, shaped by a human-altered environment. A space emerges in which the relationship between humans and animals can be renegotiated. *Constructed Nature* shows that 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