Hare

In general, the subject of animals is the predominant theme in the extensive work complex Natur Naturata that has emerged since the early 1990s. The work series “Hase” (Hare) shows that – especially for the generation of Marielis Seyler – the work of Joseph Beuys with its anthropological-shamanistic worldview of a unity of nature/animals and humans as a process of transformation is becoming repeatedly virulent. Seyler was deeply touched by Beuys' dealings with a hare in his legendary action How to explain pictures to a dead hare performed on November 26, 1965 in the Schmela Gallery in Düsseldorf. She created a photographic cycle of a killed hare whose wounds were bandaged: as a double exposure, crumpled colour photography and partly processed with natural materials, imagined as a protective act, a healing. This procedure can be found in other animal works (birds, deer), for example, also in the form of Christian symbolism (Vogelkreuz/Bird Crucifix from 1994). The artist herself explains: “The arbitrary, violent death of animals induced me to edit the photographs in a manner that reanimates the subject and that with natural materials”!

Carl Aigner