VIRTUAL TOUR | Silent Anatomy | Johannes Nielsen
Mild and thready sculptures that critics have described as characterize by an aesthetic minimalism that conveys essentiality and movement. Delicate and light human and animal bodies made by taking inspiration from the trees, exceptional models which reproduce life, arms and legs. This kind of process results into stylized human and animal bodies, perfectly interwoven with nature, which recall atmospheres full of suggestions that invite us to remember that everything is uniquely and inevitably temporary.
Another theme is also the one of the horses, one of Nielsen’s favourite forms that has characterized his artistic research, as in the past, for example, for Marino Marini: the sculptor models his horses referring, in some way, to the legends of his country of origin: “The outcome – as Angelo Crespi emphasizes – is however of great intensity: despite the solidity of the bronze, Nielsen’s horses express the quivering desire of movement, the bizarreness of their elongated body, the out of proportion shin and hock, and on top both the forearm in the forelimbs and the leg in the hindlimbs which are too thin compared to the normal morphology of the animal, as are the hindquarters and the underdeveloped chest, and then the slender almost giraffe-like neck…looking at them again carefully they recall the contours of the “mushkhusshu”, the dragon-serpent depicted countless times on the door of Ishtar in Babylon, as if there were a protoform of a fantastic animal whose echo has resided within us, in the deep layers of our psyche since ancient times.”
Published on 27/09/2022
Tag: JOHANNES NIELSEN
