NEUENKIRCHEN.- Stones, peat, fossils and sediments take center stage in Philipp Modersohn’s exhibition at Kunstverein Springhornhof, where the Berlin-based artist invites visitors to rethink the relationship between humans, nature and the materials that shape the planet.
Modersohn, born in Bremen in 1986, is known for sculptures, films and installations that question the usual hierarchy between people, animals, plants and supposedly lifeless matter. In his work, the earth is not a silent background for human activity. It is active, unstable and alive with forces of its own.
Rather than simply representing natural phenomena, Modersohn often lets them participate in the making of the work. Pressure, heat, growth, erosion and decay are not only themes, but processes that help determine the final form of his sculptures and installations. His practice brings together scientific curiosity, ecological awareness, humor and a surreal visual language.
The exhibition opens with the animated short film Undrainment, which links the draining of moorlands with the loneliness of the individual in capitalist modernity. Moving between floating underwater images from the bog and staged miniature scenes, the film follows a piece of peat through states of abundance and exhaustion. The peat becomes an unlikely protagonist, its journey reflecting systems of exploitation, depletion and alienation.
At the same time, the film points to the fragile and complex ecology of wetlands, landscapes that have long resisted easy human control. In Modersohn’s hands, the bog is not merely a natural setting, but a living system with its own history, agency and memory.
The sculptures that follow are made from concrete, glass, plastic, peat and other materials that have been pressed, fused or compressed. They appear at once ancient and contemporary, delicate and resistant. Some resemble architectural fragments, others geological discoveries or mysterious objects from a future excavation.
Using pressure and heat, Modersohn creates works that seem to hover between art object and natural specimen. They resist simple function or use, asking instead to be approached as material beings shaped by time, force and transformation.
On the upper floor, the exhibition turns to the history of land ownership and enclosure. An ornamental floor installation made with scattered granulates and sound examines the moment when open space becomes measured, divided and controlled. The work reflects on the historical processes through which land was turned into private property, and on the consequences of those divisions for both people and the environment.
Modersohn studied fine art at the Berlin University of the Arts and visual arts at Columbia University in New York. His work has been shown widely in Germany and abroad, including at Lantz’scher Skulpturenpark Düsseldorf, the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Kunstverein Göttingen and Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, as well as in Naples, Brussels, São Paulo, Zurich and Tokyo.
At Kunstverein Springhornhof, his exhibition offers a shift in perspective. Matter is no longer treated as passive raw material, waiting to be extracted, used or shaped by human hands. Instead, it becomes a living and willful part of the world — one that carries memory, pressure, damage and possibility.
Through films, sculptures and installations, Modersohn opens a space in which the planet is understood not as scenery, but as a dense and unpredictable network of relations. His work asks viewers to look again at the ground beneath them, and to consider the life of the materials that usually remain unnoticed.
