Trees are Sanctuaries, Ilse Schreiber-Noll tells us, but also hadean ghosts—shadowy presences, abstract remnants of a ruined nature. A Sturm und Drang expressionist, as The Storm makes clear, Schreiber-Noll seems to show nature in its death throes, agonized beyond recovery. She says that her trees are “symbols of hope, new beginnings, regeneration and the promise of protecting our forests for the next generations,” but her forest is very black, her trees are charred fragments of nature. There is no sanctuary in them, only suffering. “Save the Dream/Save the Planet,” the elaborate text that accompanies her trees declares, but it is only a dream, never to become a reality, as the nightmarish trees suggest. I see angry futility in Schreiber-Noll’s works, which seems an appropriate response to the neglect of nature, even indifference to its plight, and unawareness of the fact that its death is ours. by Donald Kuspit WHITE HOT Magazine March 2018