Kristin
Wenzel
TRICKSTER
Wenzel
TRICKSTER
25.9.
–
21.11.2020
Hammerschmidt+Gladigau
Trommsdorffstraße
15, Erfurt
Native
to natural religions and mythology, there are many stories about the
trickster.
It appears
as
god or hero with superhuman traits, extremely cunning, unabiding
to any principles in
order to
achieve its goals. The trickster
par excellence
in the world of plants is the orchid, with 28.000 common species
securing it’s position as the second
largest flowering family of plants on Earth.
to natural religions and mythology, there are many stories about the
trickster.
It appears
as
god or hero with superhuman traits, extremely cunning, unabiding
to any principles in
order to
achieve its goals. The trickster
par excellence
in the world of plants is the orchid, with 28.000 common species
securing it’s position as the second
largest flowering family of plants on Earth.
Most
flowering plants offer nectar to their pollinators to attract and
reward them, but orchids
deceive.
Orchids use various tricks to lure insects to their flowers, where
they shed their
pollen
onto them and let them move on without reward. Some orchids
intoxicate the
insects
with their beguiling smell, others deceive by either imitating
foreign flowers or by taking the shape of an insect themselves. The
bee, for example, is fooled by the orchid again and again in its
search for love until it has occasionally pollinated an entire
meadow.
The
tricks of orchids – ensuring their reproduction through olfactory and
visual stimuli – become the subject of Kristin Wenzel’s exhibition
“Trickster”.
The
view through the steamed-up gallery window – once a flower store in
the 1960’s – reveals a new cycle of works by the sculptor. Orchids of
all colors, ten in total, with an addition of two exotic flowers and
a carnivorous plant, all sprout in full sculptural bloom. A spatial
interplay of obstinate plants, to which Kristin Wenzel sometimes
attaches human or animal traits: Griffin,
yellow and striped, stretches its pierced orange tongue towards us;
Manhattan bubbles fervently and Peach lures us in delicate pastel
shades. Carefully
modeled, fired and hand-glazed, the ceramics blend into a flora
specially conceived for the location, which flâneurs
can experience around the clock.
Ann-Kathrin
Rudorf