Losing yourself in the forest

Forum for Contemporary Art

May 11 – July 13, 2025

Exhibition text (Prof. Vito Pace):

And she left the path and went into the forest to pick flowers. (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, "Little Red Riding Hood")

What seems like a harmless sentence marks the moment in the fairy tale where Little Red Riding Hood's misadventures begin. Behind the apparent lightness actually lies an existential turning point. With just one step, the protagonist leaves the world of order, rights, and responsibilities and enters a sphere without any certainty.

Like art, the enchanted forest has no well-trodden paths and no reference points to orient oneself by. The imaginary forest overlays the physical forest; and one must not forget that what we find in the forest—what we encounter there—are not metaphors or literary inventions, but still life forms.

Getting lost in the forest is an adventure of the imagination and therefore must not become a literal loss or a loss of artistic research.

The nature of the forest must be respected, and this respect also includes acknowledging its wild, unpredictable, and sometimes overwhelming power. Danger is part of its beauty: if you approach it courageously, you not only risk serious consequences but also miss out on the artistic messages it can offer us.

In fairy tales, as in the creative process, being lost in the forest does not symbolize the need to be found, but rather the need to find or discover oneself.

The fairytale forest is a symbol, but the real forest is also full of meanings, emotions, and allusions. Walking in a forest is a concrete act that overlaps with an intimate, dreamlike experience. Flowers and trees, mushrooms, animals: every element one encounters carries echoes of legends and ancient rituals.

“Lost in the forest” as a theme of research and design through the language of sculpture.

During the course, the focus was on design research, which also included possible realization and placement in public space.

What the students realized was a first professional approach to the concept of public art, which cannot do without the definition of individual poetry and the presentation of the concept of sculpture in the classical sense.

The works drew inspiration from literature as well as from historical and artistic references, but above all from the direct engagement with the forest and its habitat.

The entire glossary of design and conceptual material was taken into account, which is to be understood in its definition and transformation into plastic three-dimensionality.

Sculpture is thus a means of interpreting nature and the forest. It has been considered both as a standalone object and installation, as a representative sculpture, as an intervention of a political nature, or as relational art.

Sculpture: Nicolas Früh