Nanna Kaiser

Nanna Kaiser’s works are a disruption: a deviation from norms and conventions. Her practice can be situated in the lineage of Heidi Buchner’s technique of ​‘peeling’ walls and floors using liquid latex, as well as Eva Hesse’s skin-like, latex based sculptures. Working in both painting and sculpture, Kaiser continually blends the characteristics of each medium: her paintings take on sculptural qualities, and her sculptures engage with painted surfaces in an approach that undermines distinctions between object, surface and visual perception. Immersed in a pool of melancholia, Kaiser’s works explore capitalism’s psychological effects and residues. Her techniques evoke not only the decomposition of skin, but also of architecture in our current destructive Capitalocene era. Drawing on feminist practices, Kaiser understands the gathering of material through hunting, skinning and printing, as an act of appropriation in a male-dominated, patriarchal world. Using these materials for her self-made assemblages not only represents a process of reconciliation with an unfriendly environment, but also an opportunity for renewal through a mode of upcycling. In Killing of a sacred deer (Porsche 911), Kaiser uses a car interior to form the background of a peacefully depicted wildlife scene, thereby alluding to the danger of the Petrocene, which has been driving the destruction of the planet as well as the extinction of various species for more than two hundred years. Casting a dark light on the oil and car industries, she highlights the central role that fossil fuels play in shaping the contemporary world and the crises we currently face, such as populisms, climate change and extractive politics. Despite the perceived melancholy of the work, perhaps what Skinned sky utopian try (Bmw 230i Coupé) offers is a mode of introspection in which a more hopeful, less dystopian view of the future can be imagined.

Killing of a sacred deer (Porsche 911), 2023
Car interior, silkscreen, oil
90 × 100 cm

Skinned sky utopian try (Bmw 230i Coupé), 2023
Oil on car interior
250 × 150 cm