Isa Melsheimer at KINDL, Berlin.

Isa Melsheimer is a Berlin based artist who explores our human relationship with nature through the study of architectural form intersecting with living matter. The materials she uses range from concrete and ceramic through stitch and gouache to living plants. I visited her exhibition at KINDL, Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin (22.3.20 – 5.7.20) online as it was not possible to travel to Berlin during the run of the show.

This is a show of recent work, including that made during a three month residency on Fogo Island, Newfoundland in 2017. The artist’s residency is the result of an initiative created by Canadian businesswoman and social entrepreneur Zita Cobb in response to the decline of the fishing industry that supported the islanders for generations. The fishing industry has been largely replaced by the tourist industry with construction of a community-owned whale and iceberg watching hotel on the cliffs being a symbol of this change. Ironically the swimming icebergs are themselves also symbols of catastrophic climate change.

The major ceramic piece in this show is the life-size whale’s heart, see exhibition view above, made after returning from Fogo Island as a response to the story of the heart of a stranded blue whale sent from Newfoundland to Germany for taxidermy and now in a Canadian museum. The artist explains in this video.

Melsheimer’s works made whilst on Fogo Island were 2 dimensional responses with embroidery and gouache. She made daily observations of the clifftop view from her studio on a length of cloth with drawing and stitch resulting in Curtain (Year of the Whale). A series of 4 gouaches use the image of the Fogo Island Inn juxtaposed with the cliffs, sea, icebergs and sea creatures deliberately drawing attention to rising sea levels. The crashing of the waves onto the studio windows must have really brought this home to an artist from land-locked Berlin.

What draws me to this artist’s work is her multi-media approach and response to place. Her research methodology and references to the thinking of Donna Haraway on the co-existence of species resonate with me. The daily observations of the landscape during the residency and engagement with the history of the place and wider debates around tourism and climate change also draw me in.

She has been working with plants for a while and this show includes some of her Wardian cases, that use seeds from Fogo Island as part of an ongoing project, Plant Hunters.

I find this project really interesting from the perspective of my own work in which I have begun to use living seedlings, moss and earth. What the artist says about her observation that however diverse the species of seeds she places into the Wardian cases, it is always moss and ferns that prevail, is fascinating and provides a convenient metaphor for the levelling of existence.

The curation of the work uses the floor, walls and ceiling. Some work forms its own shelf whilst the three whale heart ceramics are placed directly on the floor, one resting against the wall.

• 

• 

Seeing this use of the gallery space to create a dialogue between pieces of differing scale and materials has set me thinking about the curation of my own sculptural work. I have started making collages that explore the relationships between the pieces and their components, including the growing elements within them.