Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger

HET VRUCHTBAARHEIDSMYSTERIE (The Mystery of Fertility). Sonsbeek, 2008, Arnhem (Netherlands)

HET VRUCHTBAARHEIDSMYSTERIE (The Mystery of Fertility). Sonsbeek, 2008, Arnhem (Netherlands)

HET VRUCHTBAARHEIDSMYSTERIE (The Mystery of Fertility). Sonsbeek, 2008, Arnhem (Netherlands)

DIE ROSSGEISTER (The Horse Ghosts). On the Lousberg hill in Aachen, 2008-2009

DIE ROSSGEISTER (The Horse Ghosts). On the Lousberg hill in Aachen, 2008-2009

LE MÉTA JARDIN (The Meta Garden). La Maison Rouge Paris, 2005

LE MÉTA JARDIN (The Meta Garden). La Maison Rouge Paris, 2005

Collaborators since 1997, Swiss artists GERDA STEINER & JÖRG LENZLINGER create large-scale at the border of a delicate strangeness and ecological concerns. They built a synthetic and flapper bio-diversity where webs of falling gardens and crystal accretions offer interactive wonderlands. But, as with any good fairly tale, they include a layer of dark undergrowth.

Each site-specific project fuses discarded objects, plant material, chemical-solutions, dreams, and researched miracles into narrative platforms of charmed play. Always alive, their circulatory networks form organisms of mutable organization and value, extending the limits of belief to inspiring or critical ends. Pumping and germinating throughout the exhibition, STEINER & LENZLINGER’s installations spin open-ended fables of consumption, production, transformation, and decay.

The crystallisation of artificial fertilizer is an important component in most of the installations. Coral-like figures, stalactites, needles, spherical growths and furry crusts all form from a watery solution, depending on the situation and the climate. The shape of these figures grows and develops throughout the entire duration of the exhibition. Afterwards they are gathered together and can be dissolved in water to create the starting point for a new story. There are crystals that can remember up to fifteen different exhibitions! The more often they grow the more intelligent, beautiful and precious they become.

Read more about all these projects via http://www.steinerlenzlinger.ch and if you missed their installation at Art Basel 41, click here! And good news: a brand new book “The Mystery of Fertility” that highlights 14 large site-specific growing and transient installations is out now.



comments are closed !