The Force of Nature: Visual art and jewellery inspired by trees and woods

Artist list

Alexander Blank, Anne Wenzel, Anoek Steketee, Armando, Bettina Speckner, Bruce Metcalf, Cuny Janssen, Erik Mattijssen, Erik Odijk, Evert Nijland, Fons Haagmans, Francis Willemstijn, Frank van Hemert, Georg Dobler, Gijs Assmann, Guido Geelen, Hannah van Bart, Hans van Hoek, Helena Lehtinen, Heringa/Van Kalsbeek, Jasper de Beijer, Jeroen Vinken, Joost van den Toorn, Juul Kraijer, Kim Boske, Klaus Baumgärtner, Konrad Mehus, Levi van Veluw, Lucy Sarneel, Margriet Smulders, Mari Ishikawa, Mat van der Heijden, Misha de Ridder, Nik Christensen, Piet Warffemius, Sjoerd Buisman, Terhi Tolvanen, Tom Claassen and Toon Teeken

The exhibition The Force Of Nature offers a wide selection of works that have nature as their starting point or theme. The work shown was made in the Netherlands or by Dutch artists in the last three decades, with an emphasis on the past decade. The poetic and aesthetic, as well as the metaphorical and emotionally charged aspects of the theme will be dealt with. Furthermore, the exhibition will include a great variety of media. It combines paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, photography and jewellery. The jewel as independent, artistic medium – one of the spearheads of CODA’s collecting policy – is present in a retrospective of the Finnish artist Terhi Tolvanen. This retrospective is entitled Reinventing Nature and is part of the exhibition The Force of Nature.

The Force of Nature also shows jewellery made by other visual artists and designers. In addition, objects, sculptures, photos, drawings and paintings by various Dutch artists are exhibited. Flowers will not take centre stage here. The Force of Nature is based on a much broader conception of nature, in which plants, trees, woods and growth processes form the point of departure. Sometimes the artist reverses the roles with his work, making man not the spectator of art, but rather the source and origin of nature.

The only thing that counts in nature is the cycle of life. No tree is able to contemplate being melancholy or threatening, no field of flowers considers itself decorative or enchanting. It is man who – just like the British poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge – ascribes such meanings to it. Armando’s Schuldig landschap (Guilty Landscape) is probably the most striking example in recent Dutch art history. With this work, Armando pronounces the landscape and nature surrounding Amersfoort during the Second World War guilty. Not because it let atrocities pass, but because it refuses to bear witness. No matter what happens, nature just keeps growing. The woods are not guilty of passivity, but of erasing tracks. And this while it witnessed everything.

(Art) history proves that nature lends itself very well as a metaphor. From the end of the last century, when it became apparent that figurative art was not a closed period in art history, nature as a theme and starting point was very useful as a means to represent a wide spectrum of ideas and emotions. The spectators could, in turn, recognise emotions and thoughts of their own in it. Over the past decades, jewels have developed from decorative, status-bound objects into an artistic means of expression. Many artists have let themselves be inspired by the theme of nature, profiting from the endless expressiveness and possibilities of nature.