Nils-Udo

Born in 1937 in Bavaria, Germany.

"Being a part of nature, being embedded in it and living on it, it appeared to me that acting in compliance with the laws of nature was something self-evident and necessary for survival. To preserve the original character of nature, its unscathed condition, was like preserving the air I breathed, the basis of my existence. Any human interference could bring about nothing but destruction and extinction. Every newly detected piece of destroyed nature brought me to the verge of despair."

"By elevating the natural space to a work of art, I had opened myself to reality, to the liveliness of nature - I had overcome the gap between art and life. The roundabout way of two-dimensional abstraction in painting had been overcome. Henceforth my pictures were no longer painted, but planted, watered, mowed, or fenced. Through my plantations, I associated my existence with the cycles of nature, with the circulation of life. Henceforth my life and work proceeded under the guidance and in keeping with the rhythms of nature."

"Even though I work in parallel with nature and create my interventions with all possible caution, they will always remain a fundamental contradiction to themselves. It is this contradiction on which all my work is based. Even this work cannot avoid one fundamental disaster of our existence. It injures what it draws attention to, what it touches: the virginity of nature."

"Turning nature into art? Where is the critical dividing line between nature and art? This does not interest me. What counts for me is that my actions . . . fuse life and art into each other. Art does not interest me. My life interests me, my reaction to events that shape my existence."