Central to Martin Binder’s artistic work is the role of human within nature. The anthropocentric view of nature, the relationship between the concepts of nature and culture, and the intersections of artificial landscapes and wilderness serve as sources of inspiration for his works, in which innovative technologies are combined with manual work processes.

Nature and culture do not encounter each other in his works so much as antitheses, but rather stand in a relationship of kinship. Binder explores those ambivalent and multi-layered connections between the supposedly opposing poles in his works, in whose subtle aesthetics lies a special sensitivity. In the field of tension between natural and artificial, anthropocentric claims to dominance over the earth as well as their consequences for human and the environment are artistically thematized and questioned. The often sculptural engagement with both innovative technology and natural materials offers points of connection to the themes of forestry, monocultures, climate change, nature conservation, domestication, ecosystems, and appreciation of nature.

Binder works with a vast variety of media, incorporating technical developments that form an integral part of his work, including 3D printing, 3D scanners, drone photography, and CNC milling. Technical precision meets chance and human unpredictability. Natural materials are manipulated, alienated and contextualized using both analog and digital techniques. Through these artistic methods of processing and representation, they are isolated from their original environment and elevated to the status of a show object and cultural object, while at the same time reflecting their natural origin and human intervention. Binder’s works exhibit those processes in which nature functions as a projection surface for human; original manifestations in material, shape or texture enter into a controversial relationship with intentional design.

Martin Binder creates site- and context-specific sculptural installations that reference environmental issues and raise awareness of the planet’s limits. His works open up thinking spaces for further development with a simultaneous return to nature as a sensitive ecosystem, as well as for sustainable growth models as counter-designs to unsustainable processes of progress. Among other things, he is interested in the decoupling between industrially produced wood building materials and the origin of these materials, the trees with all their components, as well as the perceptual boundaries between artificial and natural landscape. Original form and product of processing are aesthetically linked and exhibited together. His multimedia works contribute to global processes of reflection as well as awareness and sensitization to the human instrumentalization of nature as a source of resources.

A great interest in the design of and in public space runs through Martin Binder’s interdisciplinary study career in art-in-context and industrial design. Binder is experienced in art on buildings as well as art in public space and consistently implements his own designs. As a specialist adjudicator, he is frequently part of Kunst am Bau competitions and also acts as a preliminary examiner and coordinator of competition procedures for the Berlin Senate and district administrations. Martin Binder lives and works in Berlin, where he is a recipient of the Berlin Studio Stipend.

Martin Binder, born in Göttingen in 1990, lives in Berlin.