Lives and works in Berlin (Germany)
The work of the sculptor Philipp Modersohn has a certain precariousness: it seems to be situated in an intermediate state, often half-finished or already in a state of decay. The viewer is confronted by sculptures that are clearly independent and above all communicate texture and material, but also by wobbly installative objects whose stability is very often reliant on their particular placement. Sometimes these objects, which are made of various kinds of both artificial and natural materials, such as relics or weathered fossils, petrifications of uncertain origin or even geological formations, appear as kinds of threatening hybrid messengers from the future. At other times they more resemble toxic growths or useless junk left over from the construction site next door. The work Couverture (2015) is also such an object. It is difficult to define: like a folded and then carelessly abandoned blanket, this curious thing made of thin bed mortar, sand, wood and glass lies strewn on the ground, strangely soft and surprisingly hard at the same time, weirdly artificial – and then, in its casual obviousness, in fact almost natural.
 
Couverture, 2015, Dünnbettmörtel, Sand, Holz, Glas, 40 x 28 x 8 cm
Donation to Kunstpalast Düsseldorf