STILL | A | LIFE

by Stratis Pantazis

 

Vanitas and Still Life painting developed and flourished in Europe in the 16th and 17th century. In this genre, we typically discover different objects which are either natural, such as human skulls, dead animals, shells, food, flowers and plants, or human-made such as books, jewellery, coins and vases. All of them hold a symbolic meaning associated to science, art, wealth, vanity, earthly vices and pleasures, transience, mortality and death. Since then, artists have discovered new modes of expression and have access to a plurality of materials, and a number of them continue to create work, which leans visually, conceptually or aesthetically towards the Vanitas and Still Life genre. 

 

In this current exhibition entitled Still /A/ Life at Flat 1, Catherine Ludwig and Cornelia Mittendorfer are concerned with the study of what is natural and artificial in a world where no nature is left without been shaped by human intervention. Through their individual and collaborative works, they raise questions, indirectly, in a playful and humorous manner, related to the fragile interface between naturalness and artificiality, the imprudent consumption of our times, which has led gradually to the impasse of the ecological crisis. They also refer to the possible end of human life on the planet and to the decisions that each of us makes that determine our quality of life.

 

Catherine Ludwig has long been concerned with the ambivalence of naturalness and artificiality, and the role of human beings in nature and in dealing with nature. This is obvious in many of her older works as well as in these in the current show. In her catalogue Touristiken/Touriscs, published in 2020, Ludwig’s works, her essay and those of the other authors touch upon the negative impact of tourism on nature. Globalization, of which tourism is an essential part, reinforces humankind in overconsuming materials, energy, natural resources and land. According to Fred Luks, a researcher active in ecological economics and one of the contributing writers of the catalogue, “this socially and ecologically unsustainable way of living and doing business is the key problem of our time.”1 Ludwig’s series of drawings Wrapped Glacier (2023) refer to the snow farming of glaciers in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, used for ski resorts, resulting to the rise of energy costs and scarcity of water. In Ludwig’s own words, “How can this be legitimized with the increasing scarcity of water and rising energy costs since the war in Ukraine?”2 The wrapped glaciers in the drawings become an object, a material for consumption, a precious present. Their true nature is hidden, becomes invisible and they appear as nothing more than a commodity, in the same way as humans perceive nature in general, as something that can be used, according to their desires and then tossed away. Although there have been efforts, particularly in the case of ski tourism, to become more climate-neutral and sustainable in the long run, according to Ludwig, “in the age of the Anthropocene, almost every last corner of the Earth has been explored, developed and exploited.”3

 

The starting point of her drawings Flakes from fresh snow (2023) was real snowflakes. Ludwig has always been impressed by them as a transient work of art, since they melt and transform into water, which can either evaporate or turn to ice. She creates first her own flakes from technical snow or plastic beads and then draws them on paper. The fleeting existence of a snowflake carries the qualities and symbolism of the objects found in many 17th-century Still Life paintings, where the food, the colorful flowers and the beautiful fabrics signify at first glance joy, celebration and prosperity, but underneath the surface, there are signs of emptiness, vanity, death and decay.4 Ludwig’s snowflakes become a symbol of nature’s beauty but at the same time they act as a sign of ecological destruction, as they will eventually melt and disappear.  

 

Cornelia Mittendorfer is also interested in the passage of time in the series of digital photographs Shadow (2024). Specifically, she captures with her camera the shadow of glass objects and, in some cases, of her hand organizing the scene, at a particular time frame of the day, under a particular natural light near a window in her house. The light variation plays an important role on the formation of the images of the objects’ shades, as it penetrates the glass, creating different shapes and “textures.” Similarly to the Italian Metaphysical painter Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), Mittendorfer focuses on the simplicity of the geometrical shapes of the objects, while creating an atmosphere of mystery. In Morandi’s Still Life paintings, the geometrical shapes are emphasized by his mastery in studying light and shadow. In Mittendorfer’s photographs, we see only geometrical shapes, which appear slightly abstract, as she is depicting the objects’ shadows. The objects and the artist’s hand are not present, only the wall and parts of the window witness the materiality in the photographs. Somehow, Mittendorfer has managed to create a space between presence and absence, to freeze a moment, which is certain to her and uncertain to the viewers. According to her, “the playful preoccupation with shadows, this essential element of photography, also stems from a longing to stand still in a world that is becoming too fast for us. Still life. Imagination. Here and now.”5

 

In her sculptural pieces, Mittendorfer combines different organic materials, such as hair, wax, bones and seashells, with inorganic ones, such as different kinds of fabric, tulle, tennis ball, sponge, ribbon, mirror foil and string (materials of consumerism). By depriving them of their original use, she offers them a new purpose. For example, among other materials such as gauze and wax, she has added hair on a part of spine, which looks as a totem standing on a metal pedestal. She brings together these organic and manmade/industrial materials in order to form a sculpture that reminds us the sacred objects that connected tribes to a spiritual being such as an animal or a plant. Especially with the industrially made objects, Mittendorfer changes the “landscape” of the genre of Still Life. She brings in materials, such as plastic objects, which somehow are immortal and have a longer lifespan than humans do. 

 

Her two videos, the one with the oranges and the other with the dead dove floating peacefully on water make strong references to the genre of Still Life and Vanitas painting. We see their decay and decomposition while life moves on, as it is clearly suggested by the running water. They underline, on the one hand, the unimportance of our existence in the general picture of life, and on the other, human intervention on nature, if we take into account for example, that pigeon breeding resulted in the creation of birds with strange colors and various plumages.

 

Finally Ludwig and Mittendorfer created together two works. In particular, each has handed a work in progress to the other, in order to change and complete it through her intervention. For instance, they use leaves of rubber tree dyed with artificial varnish and dripped with wax. The attempt of the artist to control the melted wax portrays the efforts of humans to gain control over nature, while the final outcome, created by the flow of the wax on the leaves, reveals the irrepressible side of nature, since the leaves, even though they have been dried and varnished, they continue to change naturally with time. The work evidences that nature follows its own laws, cannot be fully controlled and humans are part of nature and depend on it. If people do not truly realize their dependence on nature, the climate crisis and the possible destruction of the planet are inevitable. As the German philosopher Ludwig Klages argues in his prophetic text “Man and the Earth” (1913), “‘progress’ sweeps the earth like a raging fire;…all that remains is the dreary working day decorated with the trinkets of noisy ‘pleasures.’ There is no doubt that we are in the age of the decline of the soul.”6

 

1) Fred Luks, “At the limit. Tourism in the Anthropocene,” in Touristiken/ Touriscs, edited by the author, edition Angewandte Series, Berlin & Boston: Walter De Gruyter Gmbh, 2020, 9.  

2) Catherine Ludwig, email to the author, 21 November 2024. 

3) Ibid. 

4) Gizela Horváth, “Still life, but passing; time in still life painting,” in Time and Space, edited by Maria do Rosário Monteiro, Mário Ming Kong, Maria João Pereira Neto, Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, 2023, 280. 

5) Cornelia Mittendorfer, email to the author, 30 October 2024. 

6) Ludwig Klages, “Mensch und Erde,” (1913), in the book Ο άνθρωπος και η γη [Man and the Earth], translated in Greek by Giorgos Stefanidis, Athens: Magma, 2020, 27.