Maria Nordman - GEO-AESTHETICS

"And this flow of light which could produce a place, this flow of air which could produce a sound, all of it remaining unpredictable, this incidence could have a moment of hesitation, in the case that at least two people are there." (M. Nordman, POIEMA Notizen/Notes 1970-, 1982).

Maria Nordman is internationally regarded as being one of the most influential artists from Los Angeles. 
In the late 1960s, she started to create site-responsive installations employing sensory stimuli such as light, air, ambient sound and the chance encounter with people. Over the last five decades, Maria Nordman has been working with architecture, film, drawings, performances or musical and language-related interventions in cities of different cultures, the public space and the museum. Ideally, her work evolves in real time; attaining an invisible participation in the flow of urban life and, by consequence, being accessible to viewers from all backgrounds.

GEO-AESTHETICS is an exhibition of work by Maria Nordman from several decades and the present, outside and inside S.M.A.K., the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent, with which the artist has a long-standing relationship. Visitors and inhabitants of Ghent are invited to develop definitions of GEO-AESTHETICS / PRESENCING, being living presences and actors in the production of aesthetical processes and meanings. Maria Nordman introduced the exhibition in the museum on March 21, the day of vernal equinox (the start of spring, when the length of day and night are equal) and opened it with a happening of events on June 21, the day of midsummer (the start of summer, on the longest day of the year).

GEO-AESTHETICS closes on September 22, the day of autumnal equinox (the start of autumn, when the length of day and night are equal once more) after a happening of new events: On September 21 Maria Nordman will participate in a discussion with Philippe Van Cauteren, artistic director of S.M.A.K. in the museum. There will be music in the park and the works in the museum and the nearby botanical garden will be activated by the artist and visitors / volunteers—actor: their actions, interactions with painting, sculpture and architecture, the space of their movement and their changing gazes, the light of the sun and the moon, the air and the rain, the ground that nourishes the plants... all becoming part of the exhibition.

Together with the exhibition a new book/sculpture for museums has been published by Walther Koenig (Köln), S.M.A.K. (Gent), Casa Encendida (Madrid), Museo Serralves (Porto) and Museum Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf).


Maria Nordman (b. 1943, Görlitz, Germany) has participated in major international art exhibitions such as documenta of 1987, 1982 and 1977; Skulptur Projekte Münster of 1997 and 1987; the Venice Biennale of 1997 and 1976 and the Carnegie International of 1991.

Maria Nordman
GEO-AESTHETICS