Naked In The Woods

Naked In The Woods, exhibition views, Raum für Sichtbarkeit, Berlin, DE, 2023 ©Merlind Papke
Group show (cur. Cora Lou Gercke) w. Calman, Elektra Tzamouranis

The only thing left for us to do is to escape into the forest. It’s impossible to get out of here unscathed, but we’re happy to accept that for this breath of fresh air, for this feeling of finally having taken a step and feeling the ground beneath our feet. We didn’t bring flashlights, but we feel more awake than we have in a long time. We tentatively feel our way forward. Contrary to what it may seem at first glance, the forest is not pure harmony. It is necessary disorder, it is anarchy. Nothing is completed, everything is just beginning and is already dying. I take a deep breath, slowly my eyes get used to the darkness.

In Naked in the Woods, three artists are searching for what connects them; they let themselves be influenced and touched by each other, form alliances. They get naked and surrender themselves. There is intimacy and distance, hiding and tender approaches. Here you can try things out. They fight their way through the brush, get scratches, turn themselves inside out and give themselves away. They make their way, naked and in the dark, wildly and stubbornly naive convinced that something warm is arriving, someone else, just as naked, just as searching, perhaps. They gather around the bonfire, they come in peace. It’s all play, but it’s also dead serious. A ritual, maybe, skinny-dipping in the moonlight, a dance around the fire. Connecting the mosquito bites on our skin until we form a pattern, weaving the web that binds us together with the needles of the pine trees.

In this painting only exhibition, the three artists embark on a search for intersections and points of connection in their artistic positions. In this medium they explore the tension between abstraction and figuration, blurring or clearly revealing, suggesting, and articulating. From their forests of abstraction figures, creatures, shadows emerge. We do not know what they want from us or where we have ended up here, we’re standing naked in the forest, we are not alone.

Cora Lou Gercke

Raum für Sichtbarkeit