Biological diversity and human simplicity

Ironic art: Exhibit at Federal Environment Agency in Berlin

There is a new exhibition at the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) in Berlin starting 19 June 2008. Titled „BRUTSTÄTTEN - Künstlerische Positionen zur biologischen Vielfalt und menschlichen Einfalt“, it features three artists’ works that take a humorous yet deeper look at man’s fractured relationship to nature.

All works at the exhibition share a tone ranging from irony to sarcasm which the artists have used to comment on man’s reckless and disrespectful interference with nature and subsequent inadequate efforts to repair the resulting damages. Written texts play an important part in all of the works.

Bärbel Rothhaar has mounted her „Mustersiedlung“- a collection of colourfully designed ceramic sculptures that double as birdhouses- in the trees of the inner courtyard at UBA. The artist Violetta Vollrath from Mainz makes a few hilarious suggestions about how to relieve the burden on the environment in her detailed „Wirklich Rettende Maßnahmen“ series, which is intended to remind one of some of the technical and political blunders which have been made to save the environment. Finally, Renate Wiedemann’s „Wunderkammern“ contain biological apparent objects with painstaking description of species—an imaginative persiflage about the adaptability of nature to man’s environmental ‘sins’.

The exhibition opening, intended to offer visitors enjoyable and extraordinary sensations, is on Thursday, 19 June 2008 at 6:00 p.m. at the Federal Environment Agency, Bismarckplatz 1, 14193 Berlin. The opening address will be given by the Art office at UBA, Martha Hölters-Freier. Art specialist Dr. Hildegard Kurt will provide some background information on the exhibit pieces. Christiane Keppler, together with Bärbel Rothhaar, will stage a performance.
The exhibition at the Federal Environment Agency, Bismarckplatz 1, 14193 Berlin, is open until 29 August 2008, Monday-Friday from 9:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. Admission is free.

German Environment Agency

Wörlitzer Platz 1
06844 Dessau-Roßlau
Germany

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 Kunstwerk  Biologische Vielfalt  Biodiversität