Flood – sculptures

The bizarre sculptures left behind by the river provided the only orientation amid the chaos of the flood in western Germany. The photographic staging turns them into gruesomely beautiful aesthetic witnesses of troubled times in which nature and civilization collide.

The bizarre sculptures left behind by the river provided the only orientation amid the chaos of the flood that hit the Ahr Valley on the night of July 15, 2021. As a result of the flood, 134 people died in the Ahr Valley, no house near the Ahr remained unscathed, not on stone on the other. Torn branches, torn out bushes, whole trees had tangled with civilizational debris to form whimsical figures.
During the clean-up work, abstruse structures grew out of the collected trash and junk, resembling spontaneous installations, as if catastrophes were paving the way for a new beginning with creative compositions.
The photographic staging turns the flood sculptures into silent witnesses of troubled times in which nature and civilization collide and into harbingers of the climate change that is also manifesting itself in Germany. Emerging from the synthesis of unleashed natural forces with human creativity, they display a gruesomely beautiful aesthetic in a dystopian landscape.