Annegret Kellner
Deep Doodle RR bs, 2026
Artist
Annegret Kellner
de 1979
Annegret Kellner, who lives and works in Amsterdam, creates works of art based on the world of plants or trees. With her works she shows the viewer something of our distorted way of dealing with nature, whose beauty and also survival is affected. Small interventions in the shape, colour or materiality of the object guarantee her urgent message to take nature seriously. Culture versus nature, that is what Kellner wants to talk about; human intervention versus the evolution of nature. We use it at our discretion and manipulate it as needed. Nature adapts and bends to our wishes.
Kellner realizes her works as sculptures, among other things. For example, these are prints of large, delicate plant leaves made of white, soft silicone, such as in the series ‘Anaesthesia’. They look like softly moving creatures, but the natural green is lost. Or take her series ‘Your Everlasting Odour’, flower bouquets with vase water made of concrete. An exaggerated attempt to preserve life, which inevitably backfires.
She therefore also uses photography as a medium, to fix what is lost. ‘Deep Doodle’ makes something visible in the doodles of what we know from 17th century flower still lives. And the spray-painted vegetation in the series ‘Lustgarten’ can thus live a longer life, but still looks more like a beautiful facade for inadequate recovery. In her series ‘Picture Pigment’ the enlarged pixel form seems like an abstraction of human ingenuity and deficiency at the same time.
In short, what distinguishes man from the plant, or how does the plant relate to man? Even more interesting is how man behaves given his dependence on the natural environment. Are our concerns and interference with nature adequate enough to prevent the loss of nature and to guarantee the fulfilment of our needs? With the emphasis always on just a few of the many properties of life, Kellner reflects to us the reciprocity of everything that surrounds us. She does this with a modesty that is no less than the visual aesthetics.
Artworks
