KARLSRUHE.- Badischer Kunstverein dedicates a comprehensive exhibition in Germany to the Romanian artist Stefan Bertalan (*1930, Răcăștie – 2014, Timișoara). Bertalan’s artistic practice is both research and process-oriented. His central area of investigation was nature, in particular plants, but also animals (insects), stones, shells, minerals, landscapes, clouds and wind, as well as astronomical bodies and cosmological contexts. Bertalan worked with various media, especially drawing, while the focus of the exhibition is on his experimental photographs, actions, happenings and performances.

Bertalan was preoccupied with plants that display an extraordinary geometrical organisation or vegetal resistance, like the apricot tree, whose branches form a network, the pentagonal blossoms of common jimson weed or the fractal cauliflower. He followed morphological processes―from the seed capsule to the blossoming and withering of plants―through sketches, journal-style (poetic) texts and mathematical calculations. Evident in his work alongside an analytical interest is a highly subjective sensibility for nature as an ally in the universal (art) system―with the plants as its agents.

Bertalan’s relationship with nature was shaped by bionics, systems theory, and a holistic worldview, with a focus on the interconnectedness of life-forms in space and time. He began communicating with nature, personifying the plants, until he inscribed himself into nature, growing together with it, and finally almost disappearing into it (exile). In their consistent nonconformity, his works are implicitly critical, and his life with plants was pure anarchy. Bertalan’s symbiotic approach to nature is still highly relevant, and is linked formally and conceptually to Plants_Intelligence, on view in the atrium of the Kunstverein.

Curated by Anja Casser

Plants_Intelligence
Sabian Baumann, Ursula Damm, Kyriaki Goni, Ingela Ihrman, Jochen Lempert (invited by Christiane Meyer-Stoll), Julia Mensch, Mathilde Rosier, Una Szeemann, Zheng Bo

Plants_Intelligence connects to Stefan Bertalan’s radical appreciation of plants and his scientific and artistic search for crossspecies interrelationships. How do contemporary artists address our dependence upon, relatedness to and affection for plant life? Where are the interfaces situated? How do they comprehend vegetal agency and intelligence, and how are they shaping it artistically?

Having evolved in tandem for millennia (if not millions of years), the relationship between humans an plants is both ancient and intimate. Overlooked for the most part, plant life is expected to supply us with foodstuffs, fabrics, fuel, or decorative objects–otherwise remaining inconspicuous. Yet plants are intelligent beings: they have desires and intentions, they communicate and act, are adaptable, capable of solving problems. Embedded in a specific location, they continuously scan their surroundings. Although incapable of fleeing when a situation becomes suboptimal, they do modify their forms to accommodate changing circumstances. In short, they strive to flourish, and deploy a variety of creative resources in the process. They are designers, liminal beings, energy converters: fully earthbound, they simultaneously ascend into the ether, transforming volatile substances into nourishment.

Using a variety of artistic methods, all of the invited artists conceive of plants as having agency, perceiving them as companions. By demonstrating that plants are active shapers of their modes of existence, the project advocates recognition of another, more-than-human way of being. Art plays an important role in this process: already the regular and precise observation and translation of certain plants and their environments via drawing, video, painting, sculpture and other media is capable of heightening our ecological sensibilities and the importance of the highlighted species.

Curated by Yvonne Volkart and Anja Casser