Home » News » New “bird houses” for Darmstadt’s “forest art” show

New “bird houses” for Darmstadt’s “forest art” show


At work in Darmstadt: Fredie Beckmans. Photo: Andreas Kelm

DARMSTADT – Fredie Beckmans is a notorious traveler. Not only does he keep switching between his home in Amsterdam and on a houseboat in Brighton, England. The Dutch artist Europe is also very familiar with his exhibitions between Iceland and Moscow, whereby Darmstadt has almost become a permanent stop for him: since 2007 he has been a guest with the works between plastic and painting seven times “Bird-free” and “forest art” exhibitions.

Border crossings

But under the corona sign, globetrotters experience the world differently, and the way from Holland to the Woog not only gets hurdles because its European train traffic has become chaos, as Beckmans explains at the meeting in the International Forest Art Center (IWZ). The procurement of an official commuter certificate between his home country and Germany was even more nerve-wracking. This was needed so that he could now work on his new three-part installation for the upcoming “Waldkunst” show on the IWZ site, which has a lot to do with crossing borders

Because Beckmans designed a “cloud cuckoo home”, that’s the name of the object installation, which he developed from three mammoth editions of the so-called “bird house”, which for many years has almost become the trademark of this artist. The work in the Darmstadt forest will be placed near the children’s construction trailer at the forest art exhibition and will draw the viewer’s gaze upwards. Because even the lowest of the three birdhouses reaches more than two meters in height, and to paint the middle one that Beckmans is currently working on at the IWZ, it takes quite a long ladder.

FOREST ART FROM JULY

The tenth international forest art trail in the forest behind the Darmstadt Böllenfall gate on the 15th of August opened. The show on “Art / Nature / Identity” runs until October 4th. (aka)

– –

A declaration of love to nature

His “cloud cuckoo home” has a sense. Because the many bird species, which he lists almost casually by hand, in which he brings their names with thick black paint on the white background of these rectangular “bird houses” and on their cantilevered roofs, belong to three groups. There are “indigenous” here, there are “international” and there “invasive” species, explains the artist, who has also been out and about a lot since his youth to go birding with his eyes.

On the one hand, this work is a written declaration of love by Fredie Beckman to the diversity of nature – 1100 bird species live in Europe alone, around 600 of which are native to Germany. On the other hand, the installation is also a hidden warning: With increasing global warming, the distribution areas or migration habits of birds have sometimes changed almost dramatically in a very short time. For example, the flamingo, which was once only found in America, Africa or Asia, has changed from an “international” to an “invasive” species, because today it also nests with us.

A source of inspiration

Which in Beckman’s view of the natural whole takes an interpretive step further in relation to his aviaries. “There are always species migrating, others are coming. Just as we humans do today. But we don’t command the birds: ‘Fly back home!’ like we do with immigrants, “he says.

He thinks and lives beyond borders, as evidenced by his written source of inspiration. It is a tattered, often used booklet in which all bird species are listed in several languages. The spectrum ranges from the biologically correct Latin to the English and Dutch to the German name, and the differences in the designation for the same bird always appear large at first glance and depend on the different worlds of ideas that people from different countries have have developed each type. But in the printed juxtaposition it becomes clear: The same bird is always referred to here – just as people can differ in their nationality, but not as beings.

– .

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.