Honored to have been asked to take part in “ROOT”, the inaugural online exhibition hosted by The Organic Centre & creatively coordinated by artist Sarah Ellen Lundy as part of the pairs ongoing collaborative ‘Project Earth’.
“Harvest” / “Sigilla Magica” installation at Circle1, Berlin November 2017
The candles have been lit, the incense has been burnt; now my work vibrates inside of Berlin art gallery CIRCLE1 until December 23rd. Thanks to Avi Pitchon, who invited me to take part in this group exhibition, alongside renown international artists from Israel and Palestine!
What started as a simple idea years ago, has accumulated into a complex installation. Succeeding years of studying the plants first-hand and a rediscovered love for ink, suddenly things fell into place. It was preceded by searching and researching, sowing and growing, loss and gain via the very basic and earth-bound occupation as a gardener and harvester.
The installation is hence titled “Harvest“. It consists of an earth altar with dried plants and harvest related offerings: self baked bread, honey from the neighborhood and self-made beeswax candles. The souls and spirits that were contained in the once alive, now dead corpora of the plants, find a new house in the form of fetishistic ink drawings: the “Sigilla Magica” series.
With these new forms I found an own language, in which I seek to both entertain and communicate memes to the viewer. Twelve ink drawings reference eleven magical plants. A twelfth refers to the bee queen, “Regina Bombina“, governing the vital interaction between plants and pollinators. In addition, two anthropomorphic drawings depict the aconite and mandragora in half-human form, namely the armed and poison-dart struck “Wolf Shaman” and beheaded and re-headed “Regina Amandrakina” accompanied by her freakish offspring. Finally, two complimenting botanical studies of the roots of the aconite and mandragora act as a bridge between abstraction and realism and explore the individual and fascinating shape of each in detail.
Scroll down for impressions from the vernissage.
“Regina Amandrakina”, ink on coffee, wormwood, mandrake and blood “Wolf Shaman”, ink on coffee, wormwood and aconite
“Pathfinder”, ink on coffee, wormwood and mandrake
“Gorgon”, ink on coffee, wormwood and aconite
“Regina Bombina”, ink on coffee and honey “Autumn Crocus”, ink on coffee, wormwood and autumn crocus flower extract “Mullein”, ink on coffee, wormwood and mullein
“Solomon’s Seal”, ink on coffee, wormwood and solomon’s seal root extract “Fennel”, ink on coffee, wormwood and fennel seed extract
I am happy to share the news with you that I will be part of the exhibition “Bad Intentions” at Circle 1 gallery in Berlin, opening November 17. You are all invited to attend and spread the news!
This is a unique opportunity for me to bring my plant inspired art to a new audience. I will be showing ink drawings of my “Sigilla Magica” and illustrations supported, by an installation with different magical herbs from my garden and surroundings.
Important (!) Due to the exhibition preparations now going into its last and hot phase, I will not be able to process new shop orders until then. All orders placed now or later, will be shipped in the week following the 20th of November.
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Below a quote from the introduction text, by curator Avi Pitchon:
“Bad Intentions” seeks to modestly contribute a tiny voice to hopefully echo into a massive abyss. The title is a reference to the good intentions of ‘artivism’, and where they lead to: the disappearance of both art and activism. The exhibition does so by staging an absurd tear between art and artist, in the hope that a gaze into the tear might enable a distinction between art and politics. The artists selected for this group exhibition are Jewish-Israeli, Palestinian-Israeli, Jewish, Palestinian and German. However, no artwork in this exhibition forms an explicit mirroring of any social or political tensions formed within the above ethnic/national triangle. The artwork does not ‘speak for itself’; it simply speaks by itself. “Bad Intentions” intentionally ignores the background and circumstance of the artist, in order to destabilise anything that is expected of such a grouping of artists, because all of those expectations are not only tired cliches, they also silence the speech of art. “Bad Intentions” is thus an invitation for the viewer to empower themselves by placing the weight and responsibility of attention on them; by not providing crutches of meaning.