Flowers Forever

Upon entering, you are immediately immersed in the enormous Calyx installation by British artist Rebecca Louise Law (born 1980). Comprising over a hundred thousand interwoven dried flowers, the work creates a sensory space and invites you to relax and take a moment for stillness and reflection.

(Super)natural beauty

In various religious traditions, flowers symbolize enlightenment, purity, and paradise, while in ancient Greek myths they represent divinity and transformation. The exhibition features objects and paintings that depict these myths, including the well-known story of the mythological figure Narcissus, after whom the famous spring flower is also named.

Science

Botanical drawings and herbariums from the 18th and 19th centuries illustrate how closely art and science are connected. The contemporary work "Of Palimpsests and Erasure" by Dutch artist Patricia Kaersenhout (born 1966) reveals the hidden layers of knowledge and history. Using large, colorful tapestries, Kaersenhout questions how we perceive, preserve, and pass on nature and heritage. With this work, the artist responds to the botanical book "Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium" (1705) by Maria Sibylla Merian, which is also on display in the exhibition. Merian's detailed drawings of Surinamese insects, flowers, and plants made her world-famous, but it is less well-known that her knowledge largely came from enslaved local and African women.

Valuable merchandise

Flowers Forever also highlights how flowers became increasingly important in Western art, especially in 17th-century still lifes, where they symbolized wealth and status. With tulip mania in the Netherlands in the 17th century, the flower trade became a large-scale speculative business for the first time. British artist Anna Ridler (born 1985) surprisingly explores the influence of stock market fluctuations in her video installation Mosaic Virus (2019): a time-lapse sequence on three screens shows how the growth and blooming of a tulip is influenced by the fluctuating price of Bitcoin. Although flowers surround us everywhere, British artist Tracey Bush (born 1964) demonstrates that we often recognize an advertisement more quickly than a specific flower variety. In her colorful collages, she transforms the packaging of familiar products into the contours of a dandelion, a daisy, and a poppy.

Political charge

Flowers often symbolize change and protest and frequently appear in noble coats of arms and national symbols. The exhibition presents various cartoons and political posters. Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwanga (born 1978) also uses flowers to address social issues. In her work "The Marias," she displays two paper renderings of the peacock flower in a yellow space. Enslaved African women carried the seeds of this flower hidden in their hair as a means of terminating an unwanted pregnancy. The work poignantly conveys how, in the same period when Victorian women folded paper flowers as a harmless pastime, others were forced to use flowers as a last resort and a last resort.

Technology

Also on display is work by Studio DRIFT. Meadow is an inverted landscape composed of mechanical flowers that open and close. The installation alludes to the transience of the ever-changing seasons and natural growth processes. Meadow is the result of DRIFT's research into how an inanimate object can mimic changes that express character and emotion. With his interactive installation, Extra Natural, French artist Miguel Chevalier (born 1959) invites you into a virtual garden, where he digitally brings various seeds and flowers to life. His colorful creations move with you as you walk through the space.

Cooperation

The Flowers Forever exhibition was initiated by Kunsthalle Munich in collaboration with Kunsthal Rotterdam.

Publication

The Dutch-language catalog Flowers Forever: Flowers in Art and Culture will be published to accompany the Flowers Forever exhibition. Available from March 27th at the Kunsthal shop and online at the Kunsthalshop.