Visum Bestarium

The image of the animal without images of animals. An illustration of John Bergers theory of the "disappearance of animals from our society": The artificial figures and empty diorama-scapes disclose our human notion of the wild animal as construction. With his deployment of photographic means, the artist assumes an entirely unique position within the field of tension of the human-animal relation.
The photo-installation Visum Bestarium is a tableau made up of framed photographs showing views and details of various dioramas from German natural history museums. For the photographs the stuffed animals were removed from the displays, leaving behind an artificial landscape, an imaginary idealised nature, a virtual space designed for an animal but serving only us humans. Romantic notions of nature from the 19th century merge here with longings for wilderness and the exotic. There result both naive but perfectly illusionary reconstructions of nature as well as symbolic constructions.