German artist Mariele Neudecker is known for her atmospheric works that interrogate climate change, the majesty of nature and the frailties of civilisation. Her practice ranges from a Submerged Village and a gallery-housed Iceberg to a series of mountains, forests and seas rendered in glass.
In Lithuania, to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Neudecker’s Ship is being presented in the exhibition From Amber to the Stars. Together with M. K. Čiurlionis: Now and Then. Speaking recently, Neudecker reflected on her work, her collaborations with scientists, and the human longing for knowledge.
The exhibition “From Amber to the Stars. Together with M. K. Čiurlionis: Now and Then” will be held at the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, located at V. Putvinskio Street 55 in Kaunas. It will be open from March 21 to October 12 of this year.
You’re well known for your ‘tank works’: three-dimensional landscapes within glass aquariums filled with water and certain chemicals. How did the idea first come about?
I was casting little mountains and other landscapes in clear resin at the time. At some point I decided I wanted to include the sky in the models. So, I started casting the sky in resin, but it was too stagnant, and the process was difficult, and ended up with visible resin partitions and very visible layers.
One time, when I was visiting a friend who was painting with acrylic, I started looking at his pots of water in the window of his studio. After asking him what it was, I decided to do some tests with water mixed with dyes and additives.
I found it very interesting to work with liquids and see how different materials behave in it. Some rise in the water indefinitely, others settle down. So, I was looking for things that would go with the salt and stay in suspension.
I was really interested in the time-based element, and the continuous change that became visible over time. I made some pairs of tanks where I would fill one tank with water and salt first and would do the same with another a little later. The chemistry would follow. I was curious about how cinematic this process would become.
Imagine having three or four tanks waiting for a day in between the fillings, then another day, and so on. Eventually, you would get this strange continuation, almost like a set of images in film clips.
One of your ‘tank works,’ titled Ship (1998), is currently featured in the exhibition From Amber to the Stars. How do you find its placement within the exhibition’s navigation section?
It makes sense here. This tank has got a dominant ship in it and it’s one of the tanks with the most significant human element as a protagonist. Typically, my tanks are more landscape-y, often depicting little bits of residue of human life – like a path or a sign or cairn – but without actual/ figures.
How should viewers approach it?
These works are to be experienced in 360 degrees. Initially the ship was supposed to be oriented toward the viewer, resembling many traditional paintings where ships sail ‘out’ towards the audience. I thought it would be more intriguing if the ship pointed towards the corner, allowing the back of the ship facing the viewer, while going off into the distance.
It’s good to walk around the piece, as you can and should view it as a sculpture from all angles. Standing and looking from afar; close up, the work offers different perspectives; you can see the water refracting, which can create the illusion of two or four ships, if you find the right spot or morph it into one very long ship. It seems to be moving.
The ship is often seen as a symbol of journeys, exploration, or displacement. Are these elements important to you?
Oh yes. I like how you mentally inhabit the space differently in a landscape or seascape. This piece is three-dimensional, and it tries to be more than just an image. As it is 3D you might find yourself more drawn to the idea of being inside it, which you may not do as much with a painting, but still do in a different way.
Were Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings an initial inspiration behind Ship?
Yes, it was. I look at so many paintings, not just those by Caspar David Friedrich, but he’s particular about having the so-called ‘Rückenfigur’. In a similar way, the ship becomes a figure turned away from us, allowing us to imagine ourselves in that position. The ‘Rückenfigur’ is often all about the viewer becoming that ‘character’, looking, seeing what they are seeing. So, in a way, the ship takes on a role of the ‘Rückenfigur’ character. The viewer ‘becomes’ the ship.
You frequently transform two-dimensional images into three-dimensional works. Is this interplay important to you?
Yes. Often, two-dimensional images begin with three-dimensional scenes and objects. My tanks are essentially a return to their original form – as always taken from initial 2-D images: paintings, postcards or published photographs.
The very first tank would have included little model figures, but I abandoned that idea almost immediately. I thought it would be more engaging for the viewer to feel part of the scene rather than having tiny model people that would make it seem like a toy train set, and more voyeuristic by implicating a human presence.
What’s interesting is that the scale and size of some of my tanks are relatively big, while many of the paintings I am dealing with are ‘relatively’ small. In fact, most of the Caspar David Friedrich paintings I was referring to were small. And everybody was referring to my work as models and maquettes.
I got almost confused, as everything in newspapers, magazines, and books is relatively small, but those things never get called ‘models.’ That became quite an interesting question of how we connect and relate to size and how the human body size relates to the space in the image.
I was always aware of the size of a tank and how it relates to the human body, as well as the paintings in some way. I wanted them to be at the height of the paintings. That’s why the plinth is (almost always) part of the piece. The height of the tank is always very deliberately similar to the hanging heights of paintings on a wall.
Do you draw any connections between the idea of the tank and historical or scientific contexts, such as the use of tanks in marine biology or scientific research?
Definitely. It’s common to find specimens at the Natural History Museum preserved in liquids like formaldehyde. I’m quite familiar with these formaldehyde-preserved creatures since I spent a lot of my childhood in biology labs.
My dad taught chemistry, physics, geology, and biology, and he had a collection of fossils, butterfly specimens, and all sorts of other items at home. For me, it was completely normal to see things displayed in glass boxes.
Viewing objects in this type of container changes your perspective. For example, if you put a bit of sand into a glass box, it immediately looks important.
Similarly, the transformation of paintings into three-dimensional forms is also significant. It emphasizes that ‘everything’ is man-made. I’m deliberately highlighting the materials – fiberglass, silicone, and glass – so that people can see they are real substances. I also like that the water and the bubbles, along with the chemistry involved, does not have any pixels or brush strokes.
The tanks seem to blur the line between the natural and the artificial. Considering issues like climate change and environmental degradation, nowadays your ‘tanks works’ look very powerful.
Yes. One of my first tanks represented a small boat filled with people struggling at sea. I titled it The Raft of the Medusa, referencing the famous painting by Théodore Géricault of the same name. I created that piece in 1995, which feels like a long time ago.
It’s interesting how different it looks today, in the light of refugees and asylum-seekers crossing the Mediterranean and the English Channel.
I do enjoy that people interpret my work consciously and subjectively. I’ve done a lot of work that, in hindsight, makes me think, ‘Oh dear …, I created that back in 2000.’ It looks very different today because of various issues, including politics and the climate crisis.
One piece I made in Germany is an outdoor installation titled The Sunken Village (Das Versunkene Dorf). It features a sunken village with a church and two houses that are half submerged in a lake. The piece was not conceived as a commentary on environmental issues; rather, it reflected ideas of flooding, erasure, and the desire of wealthy landowners for unspoilt views.
In some instances, entire villages have been deliberately submerged, forcing communities to relocate. While at the time my work spoke primarily to those political choices, it now resonates strongly with contemporary debates on the environment.
Tell me about your collaboration with scientists.
As you may know, I have worked extensively in the field of art and science, particularly focusing on deep-sea science and marine biology as well as the Arctic and Antarctica. I’ve also been involved with CERN and the broader scientific realm of quantum physics, which is obviously quite a different area altogether.
These disciplines deal with a strong sense of a very limited access and selection; both only look at tiny fragments of their reality.
I have open access to research and work at CERN as a visiting artist, thanks to Kathleen Soriano, who encouraged me to go there – after a long conversation about the effects and compensation of the gravitation of the moon, trains etc. and their effects on CERN’s operations.
Kathleen introduced me to Ariane Koek, who developed the Art at CERN program. During my so far 5 visits, I interviewed physicists and filmed various experiments the footage of which I used for making works, and overall gained insight into the vastness of CERN beyond the Hadron Collider.
Have there been any especially memorable experiences working with scientists?
I’ve had the opportunity to work in cross-disciplinary ways. I worked on 2 collaborations with Alex Rogers, a deep-sea marine biologist, previously a professor of marine and conservation biology at University of Oxford. It allowed us to reach diverse and new audiences.
During our exhibitions and presentations, we engaged both scientists and artists, which enriched the experience for everyone. Alex organized workshops during the exhibitions, targeting kids, young people and adults, which excited him as it opened up his work to a broader audience beyond academic publishing. This more open approach helped spark interest in science, especially among children.
I used a lot of his footage for short film loops, exploring perception and how our view is limited by light and cameras. It was fun collaborating with Alex; he would send me notes from an expedition, from a ship in the Pacific, like: ‘I’ve filmed an underwater sunset for you.’
I would spend weeks searching for it in his footage. This process mirrors how scientists search for knowledge, reflecting a shared curiosity between artists and scientists. Both ask questions about reality, requiring a search to find ‘what you’re looking for’. In the case of the ‘underwater sunset footage’, I never found ‘it’, but that way, I saw every second of it all, and found many other film-clips I ended up using for my work.
Besides your creative practice, you’re also work as professor of Fine Art at Bath School of Art, Film and Media, where you run the research forum The Material : Art : Science : Environment : Research (M|A|S|E|R), that addresses questions around overlapping developments in the Arts and Sciences, historically and today. Could you tell me more about this initiative?
The lockdown inspired me to organize three online conferences where artists and scientists from various locations discussed all sort of things.
The very first discussion was dedicated to the ocean. It turned out that a lot of people were interested in the overlapping of different disciplines. We also had a panel about the Arctic and one about Art and Science.
So, out of these discussions, the M|A|S|E|R group formed, focusing on multidisciplinary work. We just had a meeting featuring a speaker on technology and art for young people in an environmentally relevant educational program. At times we also invite students to join.
We currently have about 30 members, including Ben Parry, who co-runs the group with me and who looks at waste and plastic-pollution, particularly in the ocean. While I’m focusing on the Arctic and the Ocean.
I’m proud of members like Evgenia Arbugaeva, a Russian photographer, who got recently nominated for an Oscar for her documentary-film Haulout, which explores walruses affected by climate change in Siberia.
We’re also planning exhibitions. Last year’s exhibition, The Scale of Water, showcased various contributions related to water, including most people in the group.
The concept of the Sublime is central to much of your work. How do you define the Sublime?
The definition of the sublime is forever changing, even for me. It’s an intriguing word and topic because itis historical yet constantly being tested; it famously escapes a fixed definition, it is maybe trying to represent greatness, extraordinariness as well as the grotesque and terrifying.
So, what is the sublime? I tend to view it mainly in the context of the Romantic Sublime, considering its relevance today and how technology and science contribute to our understanding of a reality that could be called ‘the Sublime’.
There are many aspects to explore. I found it interesting that Kathleen Soriano mentioned during the opening event how Keith Tyson and Anselm Kiefer are similar to Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis in that they strive to explore the bigger picture. But aren’t we all trying to do this in our subjective ways? This pursuit is tied to the sublime – the quest for something that transcends reality, that is all at once: beautiful, miraculous and terrifying.
I experienced a similar approach during my time at CERN, surrounded by all this advanced technology. In the experiments I was fascinated how all this very sophisticated theoretical thinking was manifest in often very make-shift looking experiments, using a lot of elastic bands, tin foil, cardboard, etc.
While I don’t claim to understand quantum physics or quantum mechanics, it reflects the quest and desire to comprehend bigger ideas, and theories and a very particular kind of micro- and macro-materiality. Ultimately, this always circles back to the sublime – whether historical or contemporary – as we strive to reach something that escapes definition.
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