NILS-UDO, Deux Saisons: Vassivière en Limousin 1986–1987

Published by LAC&S (Limousin Art Contemporain et Sculptures), Vassivière en Limousin; printed by Centre Impression, Limoges, 1987. Texts by Régis Durand and Marc Sautivet. 22 × 24 cm, 50 pages. Softcover, black wrappers, photographically illustrated throughout.

Condition: Original wrappers with rubbing and softened edges consistent with age and handling; internally clean.

NILS-UDO turned away from painting in 1972 to begin working directly with landscape: planting, arranging and photographing vegetation, water, ice, snow and other materials subject to growth, weather and disappearance. The date places him within an early European reconsideration of landscape that also included Richard Long, Gina Pane and Giuseppe Penone, rather than downstream of the natural interventions that became more familiar during the following decades.

Deux Saisons records work made at Vassivière across summer 1986 and winter 1987, just as LAC&S was shifting its programme from conventional sculpture toward a more direct engagement with the landscape. The site adds another complication: Vassivière's apparently natural island environment sits within a reservoir created through hydroelectric engineering in 1950. Nature here was already constructed before Nils-Udo arrived.

Leaves decompose. Ice melts. Seasons change. What survives here is their contemporary printed record.

The publication therefore occupies an unusual position between catalogue and remainder: fifty pages preserving temporary arrangements made under conditions that could not be repeated indefinitely. Seen through Deux Saisons, Nils-Udo appears less interested in fixing nature into sculpture than in waiting for what a particular place and season make available.

The work changes.

The photograph remains.

And eventually the book acquires a duration of its own — its rubbed black cover and softened edges now recording a different passage of time.