BOOK PRESENTATION | NOWHERE TO BE FOUND
NOWHERE TO BE FOUND presented by Matthias Kessler, Mark Dion and Dieter Buchhart.
The catalog features extensive documentation and an in-depth look at a selection of his most important works in full color, alongside texts by the director of Kunsthal Rotterdam Emily Ansenk, director of Kunstmuseum Bonn Stephan Berg, professor of cultural and literary theory at Humboldt University Berlin Hartmut Böhme, Vienna-based curator and art theorist Dieter Buchhart, poet Sarah Campbell, Professor of English literature at Stanford University Terry Castle, director of Brandts, Mads Damsbo, New York-based art historian and curator Arnaud Gerspacher, Vienna-based curator and art critic Anna Karina Hofbauer, head curator of contemporary art at LACMA Franklin Sirmans, deputy chair of Curatorial Practice at School of Visual Art Jovana Stokic; and interviews with New York-based artists David Brooks and Mark Dion, Berlin-based artist Klara Hobza, former director of the Whitney Museum and SFMoMA and Chair of Art Practice at SVA David A. Ross, and Mathias Kessler.
Spanning a decade of work, the essays focus on Mathias Kessler’s investigations into the historical and contemporary implications of the persisting Western-Eurocentric fantasy of the natural world: an obsession with nature as both a terrifying unknown and an exploitable resource. He pulls apart the complex movement of man and nature across this nexus of natura naturans (self-creating nature) on one hand, and natura naturata (created nature) on the other, rejecting a merely environmentalist stance. Across photography, installation, and social sculpture, Kessler probes the contemporary imagination, employing a visual language that borrows from the Romantic landscape genre and expedition photography, using empirical reason and the “sublime” as foils for an investigation that goes beyond the mere “natural” surface to explore the more complicated political and economic forces that have drastically altered the social and natural landscape.
His visually arresting images and participative frameworks are sites for confrontation with and reflection on contemporary anxieties about the environment and globalization; digitization and artificial realities; post-industrial decay and natural disasters.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Mathias Kessler, born 1968 in Austria, lives and works in Brooklyn NY, received an MFA from the interdisciplinary Art Practice Program at SVA and has recently had solo exhibitions at the Rosphot National Museum for Photography in St. Petersburg, the GL Holtegaard Museum in Copenhagen, and at Kunstraum Dornbirn in Austria. His most recent group exhibitions include “[UN]NATURAL LIMITS” at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, “Hohe Dosis” at Fotohof & Atterseehalle in Salzburg, Austria, “The Nature of Disappearance” at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, “Hoehenrausch II” at Offenes Kunsthaus in Linz, Austria. Mathias has participated in the Cape Cod Modern House Trust/Artist/Scholar residency in 2012 as well as the AIRE Everglades Artist in Residence Program in 2012/13. His work is included in the Cisneros Collection, the Landesmuseum Vorarlberg, the Nordico Landesmuseum Linz, and the Illwerke VKW Kunstsammlung. In 2009 he was awarded the prestigious Staatsstipendium for Fotografie award in Vienna.
Dieter Buchhart is a curator and art theorist based in Vienna. He completed his doctoral studies in art history and restoration science and has curated numerous exhibitions in renowned international museums and art spaces. From 2007 to 2009 he was the director of the Kunsthalle Krems, near Vienna. Since 1999 he has been known for his critical work, contributing to several monographs and art publications such as Kunstforum International. As an art theorist, he has contributed many catalog essays, magazine articles, and lectures, his research focus ranging from Expressionism to contemporary art (1900-the 1980s). Selected exhibitions curated by Buchart include “Keith Haring” at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (2014), “Keith Haring: Politics of the Line” at the Musée d’Art Modern de la Ville de Paris (2013) and “(Un)natural Limits” at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.
Mark Dion is a New York-based artist who examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, the artist creates works that address distinctions between objective scientific methods and subjective influences. By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Dion questions the authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society. Dion received a BFA and an honorary doctorate from the University of Hartford School of Art, Connecticut in 1986 and 2003, respectively. His work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Gallery, London; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, among others. Presently, he is a mentor at Columbia University in New York and co-director of Mildred’s Land, innovative visual art education and residency program in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania.