Catalogue of the 2024 exhibition at the Musée jurassien des Arts, Moutier

Nature is at the heart of the work of Bernd Nicolaisen and Amedeo Baumgartner. The exhibition presents the unique approach with which these two Bernese artists approach this crucial theme, in the era of current ecological issues. In the old villa which houses the museum, a floor reserved for each artist allows the public to deepen the singularity of Nicolaisen's work, based on photography, and that of Baumgartner's pictorial research.

The exhibition also highlights the convergences that exist between the approaches of the two creators, in the form of a dialogue between the works presented in the large room of the museum. The flowing water of streams painted by Amedeo Baumgartner responds to the ancestral ice photographed by Bernd Nicolaisen. A flowery meadow or a forest path from the first fits in a surprising way with certain close-ups of thousand-year-old pine bark from the second. Beyond these thematic and formal echoes, the two artists come together in several respects, whether in their attention to the fragment of the natural world as a microcosm or in their integration of a form of temporality.

Bernd Nicolaisen captures fundamental and ancestral elements, wood, ice ormillennia-old rock, or freely reflects a comet. He works his shots with long pause times and pays particular attention to the natural distribution of light, never resorting to artificial lighting or retouching.