Jukai-Ryokō / 樹海旅行 [Reisendes Meer aus Bäumen], Nails-Project-room, Düsseldorf

Experimental research Project in collaboration with Marco Biermann, a birch, an Ambertree, and several little plants, Nails projectroom, Düsseldorf, 2020

  • The world is on the move. Flexibility is the order of the day. Rootedness is out. People and animals are traveling and migrating. But what about the plants? In the context of dramatic climatic changes, the two artists Tomas Kleiner and Marco Biermann dedicated their collaboration to the situation of plants, which are often at the mercy of rapid changes living conditions due to their rootedness and spatial inability to move. While humans and animals can quick and flexible open up new habitats, the flora threatens to fall by the wayside due to its flexibility. The project shows an experimental, existential and humorous examination of this current topic.

    In what way would a young birch most like to travel – on land, on water, or in the air? What precautions must be taken to take a tomato plant healthy in the Arctic Circle? How can house plants and greens strip fragments be integrated into automated and permanently moving transport processes? And how can plants become a permanent part of our turbulent everyday life? The exhibition entitled „Jukai-Ryokō“ shows the first process-based visibility of the larger-scale project. The exhibition space of Nails-projectroom will be transformed into research and action space, within which the first working fragments, artistic-model experiments and discussions will take place, in order to pursue the above-mentioned question and to open up a social discourse on them.

    The project is intended to become a flexible laboratory of scientific and artistic collaboration, in the context of which, over the years, diverse artistic forms and visibility can be created in accordance with the obstacles and hurdles.

    The project is supported by the Kunst- und Kulturstiftung der Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf, Kunststiftung NRW and Baumschule Schmitz

Medusa : floating body #4 at IKOB Museum Eupen / Belgium

Solo exhibition in cooperation with Marco Biermann at IKOB Museum of Contemporary Art, Eupen / Belgium 2020

  • In addition to the video installation, which has been shown before in other contexts as you see below, the focus of the show was to enlarge the experimental forms of inflatable objects in a loose relation to the performance action on the Rhine in 2019.

    More information about the project you will find at “Medusa : floating body #3 / #2 / #1”

Medusa : floating body #3 at K21 Kunstsammlung NRW

Medusa : floating body in the context of the exhibition “in order of appearance” at K21 Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf, 2020

  • In the context of the exhibition “in order of appearance” in the Kunstsammlung NRW, the presentation of the artistic research and performance project “Medusa : floating body” concentrates on the video installation whose images were created during the previous action on the Rhine.

    The air mattresses made of robust PVC, which were designed, produced and printed by the artists especially for the installation, are presented as an iridescent visual medium and exhibition furniture, inviting the visitors to look at them and lie on them at the same time. Lying on one of the mattresses, with the vertical view upwards, the reverse view of the drone, the viewer can experience the action and the feeling of ‘letting oneself go’.

    In addition to the content-related examination of the concept of a childlike, free and weightless floating moment, the visual level can also be recognized as a clear construction of such a floating state, which at times allows the viewer to drift along with it, but also allows it to tip out again and again.

    More information and press articles:
    RP Online – Treiben lassen im Kunstbetrieb / PDF ⟶ 
    WZ – Ausstellung in der Kunstsammlung NRW / PDF⟶