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Carl Aigner
For only a brief period of time, on a meadow along the birch-alley beneath the cultural centre Höribachhof in St. Lorenz, Daniel Zimmermann has laid out 10.000, 2,7 m long raw wooden slats, in a complex, chaotic way, and then taken five 3D-pictures.
In a second, definite step five 3D-telescopes were installed at the same spot, which show this picture. The artist is concerned with the interplay of ideas (of spaces in nature - here the meadow along the birch-alley), representation (in 3D-photographs of an artistic intervention) and an immediate comparability of perceptions (the wooden slats have long since been removed, the beholder now only sees the meadow along the birch-alley).
The focus of Daniel Zimmermann's work is the perceptibility of landscape and nature in the face of our media reality. It is not possible any longer to look at nature in an innocent, simple-minded way. The conception of nature is more and more informed and shaped by media images: this work is a valuable contribution to the current discussion of the virtual perception of nature. Urban wants and longings for an unspoiled nature collide with a landscape that is already culturally formed; that has long since been a cultural landscape. In this installation, the wooden slats in their media form of 3D-images are reduced to function as the interface between longings for nature and culture.
Through the comparison of a bygone view with a present one, the momentum of temporality surfaces in the contemplation of the picture in an emphatic way. Even more: we are confronted with the fusion of the past and present perception of this landscape and thereby with the factor of time. The temporality of culture and the timelessness of nature are thus further, implicit aspects of a very complex contribution to Land Art.
Carl Aigner
Director of the Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, St. Pölten · Founding publisher of Kunstzeitschrift für Photographie & Neue Medien EIKON, Vienna · Chairman of ICOM Austria (International Council of Museums).
Link: Mondsee Land Art (http://www.mondsee-land-art.at)