In the general perception, Günther Uecker is strongly with "ZERO" and his nail pictures, which helped him to the top of German post-war art and also to his international breakthrough. But his artistic work is much more multifaceted. Uecker is a constant commentator on the world's problems and a steadfast fighter for understanding and change. He encounters what alienates him with openness and responds to it in his own artistic language. With his "Trees" and "Forests", he takes up the theme of the vulnerability of man and nature. The first tree sculpture entitled "Kunstpranger" (Art Pillory) was created in 1983 by nailing the trunk of an elm tree at Brusten Galerie in Wuppertal. The idea was born in the autumn of 1983, when Annelie Brusten accidentally noticed the forest workers in the park marking the 80-year-old elm. She learned that the ill tree was to be sawed off and burned. Annelie Brusten decided to get the then already well-known "ZERO" artist and professor at the art academy to Wuppertal. In his speech on occasion of the opening of the exhibition, Uecker denounced the destruction of the environment by humans and declared the nails to be "armor" to "scaffold the tree, make it strong". Other, mostly multi-part works followed. What these works have in common is that Uecker equips the sometimes smaller, sometimes larger tree trunks with a fortified crown of carpenter's nails and seals the wounds of the tree with a healing ointment made of ash and glue. In works from the "Nail Forests" series, Uecker follows a basic principle of his artistic work, that is addressing the fragile relationship between man and nature and the destruction of the fundaments of human existence. [SM]