Martin Schwenk: The Secret Life of Plants

April 24 – May 28, 2010

Number 35 is pleased to present new sculptures by Düsseldorf-based artist Martin Schwenk. This is his second exhibition with the gallery.

In "The Language of Flowers" of 1929, Georges Bataille assesses that the language of flowers is contradictory: the above ground part of the plant distinguishes itself through purity and beauty, the opposite expresses itself in the root, its ugly dirtiness and proliferation. Bataille points out that because only the plant’s upper part would be included in civilization, its materiality becomes deceiving. If one wanted know the entire plant, one had to also understand its underground ugliness.

Enter here the vegetative sculptures of Martin Schwenk. The plants formed out of silicone, plaster or Acrylic glass raise the ambivalence of the flower to the principle that they show the attractive and the depraved part of the plant alongside each other. While the artificial structure of Schwenk’s work address textbook artwork, the real sculpture settles in half way between nature and the museum. Its deviations from both create the specific eccentricity of Schwenk’s sculptures.

Martin Schwenk was born 1960 in Bonn, Germany. He studied at the Staatlichen Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf where he currently lives and works. He has exhibited throughout Germany and has an upcoming project at Museum Haus Lange und Haus Esters in Krefeld.