Victoria Miro presents Forces in Nature, curated by the celebrated US critic and author Hilton Als.

The exhibition explores the idea of man in nature and includes works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Verne Dawson, Peter Doig, NS Harsha, Alice Neel, Chris Ofili, Celia Paul, Tal R, Sarah Sze, Kara Walker, and Francesca Woodman.

In his introduction to the catalogue, Als writes about the exhibition’s premise: ‘In her great poem about the sea, A Grave (1916-18), the American poet Marianne Moore wrote: “It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing/but you cannot stand in the middle of this.” For centuries creators ranging from Casper David Friedrich to the artists in this show have sought to represent man’s interesting, vexed, and insoluble relationship to the natural world. Forces in Nature celebrates and questions the male form or its absence in paintings, photographs, drawings, and installation. Does nature mean more to us when seen against the background of the human form? Or do we understand a landscape or seascape more acutely when the form is absent?

Do women artists want to “stand in the middle of a thing” as defiantly as male artists? And how much of our understanding of nature is, by now, filtered through the experience of the modern world, with its focus on representation or documentation as opposed to directly “felt” experience? Forces in Nature is not only a celebration of these questions but an examination of them.’

Forces in Nature, an illustrated catalogue with texts by Hilton Als, accompanies the exhibition.

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