Wolfgang Nestler, a two-time documenta participant, is known as a creator of autonomous large and small sculptures and site-specific installations. His works are mostly made of steel and wood, they lie or stand in various shapes and sizes on the floor and on pedestals, they hang on the wall or from the ceiling. They are elliptical bodies, spinning tops, discs, linear structures; single and multi-part, large and small, light and heavy, resting in themselves or movable and almost always playful and designed to be seen, but also touched and experienced in play with them.

Accordingly, the essence of this art is not only revealed in art-historical recognition and thoughtful understanding, but above all in the participation and willingness to encounter art with that participatory openness that is inherent in the works. For one moving moment one evening in May 2023, Nestler offered his works for contemplation and also for physical engagement and bodily appropriation in the large light-filled atrium of the Parkside Office Gallery, an office building in Berlin-Mitte. At his invitation, the Düsseldorf dancer, choreographer, and performer Katharina Roll moved through the temporary mesh of his works, dancing and performing; she set the objects in motion, rearranged them, snuggled up to them, or inscribed herself on them. This staging of the pictorial works exemplified the interdisciplinarity of the arts and, much more fundamentally, the inner connection between art and life. This art event at the Parkside Office, far from spectacle, also included the incorporation of melody and rhythm by the Burkinabe musician Ezé, who musically enlivened and accentuated Nestler’s pictorial work with singing, guitar and drum playing.

In the overcoming of the sole impression of the outer form, in the mutually appropriating interaction of the arts and in the inclusion of the viewers: in all this Wolfgang Nestler’s sensitive art fulfills its deeper meaning as a substance that can contribute healingly to the everyday life of all people.

Martin Seidel