Exhibition Catalogue

AS A SEED AS A PLANT

Group exhibition exploring our natural world as a source of inspiration and support.
With works by Erik Andriesse, Carel Blotkamp, Cuny Janssen, Antonietta Peeters and Diana Scherer.

With Spring just around the corner, andriesse ~ eyck presents a group show titled after Stevie Wonder’s 1979 album Journey through “The Secret Life of Plants”. The double album was the soundtrack to the documentary ‘The Secret Life of Plants’, which was based on the book with the same titled by Peter Tompkins published in 1973. The book presented various experiments in support of unconventional ideas such as ‘plant sentience’ and the existence of a supra-material world of cosmic beings, which were quickly dismissed as pseudo-science and fiction. Today, 50 years after the publication of the ‘Secret Life of Plants’, its ideas have found more common ground as our consciousness towards nature is changing. Artists in particular, continue to expand their – and our - imaginings of the beauty and mystery of our natural world.  

AS A SEED, AS A PLANT includes works by Erik Andriesse, Carel Blotkamp, Cuny Janssen, Antonietta Peeters, and Diana Scherer. Each in their own way, these five artists have been inspired by nature.

The photographs by Cuny Janssen capture the majestic beauty of the
natural world. Whether it is a solitary tree standing alongside a small yellow dirt road in India, with its branches shooting off in all direction, or the pattern of green and yellow starshaped leaves, Janssen’s images stop us in our tracks and wonder at its unparalleled beauty.

The sculptural paintings on show by Antonietta Peeters are seemingly botanical in motif. The mirrored concave and convex forms combined with the delicate colour invite association and spatial experience.

Not one flower, plant or tree is identical: there is always a slight in color or surface pattern that gives each species is unique identity. A similar principle is at play in Erik Andriesse’s 1985 series of lino prints featuring the contours of one of his favorite flowers, the amaryllis. Only, it is not the flowers that show slight variations, but the red backgrounds that reveal that each print is a ‘unique copy’. Erik Andriesse’s prints are a meditation on modern art’s dichotomy of the original and the copy, on authenticity and the presence of the artists’ hand.

Carel Blotkamp’s shiny sequin paintings offer a critical reflect on the relation between nature and culture. Blotkamp appropriates existing images and fearlessly embraces glamor and kitsch. For In Paradisum (2021) and Ginko Biloba (2019), photographs of trees are reworked into a shiny attractive image, as if they want to sell nature’s beauty to us.

Diana Scherer too examines the relation between nature and culture. For the past few years her fascination has been focused on the dynamics of the root system, that part of nature which is hidden underground. For AS A SEED, AS A PLANT Scherer has made a ground piece showing the intricate underground system, and its potential to be cultivated into different shapes and surfaces.

Diana Scherer_text