I like the flowers (Licuala Grandis Hain #1), 2024
Pressed and dried plant, mounted on stainless steel plates
852 mm x 900 mm
10 unique art works
NOW AVAILABLE
“I like the flowers, I like the daffodils . . .”—the well-known children’s song lends its name to this series, which consists of plants and small animals that have been pressed flat. As in the children’s song, the beauty of nature seems to be the main theme here. In contrast to the childhood practice of pressing flowers between the pages of a book, however, or creating herbaria to classify and archive vegetation, the work converts large-scale plants and small trees into almost two-dimensional forms. Suspended delicately in space, they become likenesses of themselves reminiscent of floral wallpaper or backdrops.
The plants presented here are not, however, mere images of floral beauty. They also allude to the brutality inherent in the Western conception of nature. When scaling up the plants, the violence of the works’ production becomes impossible to ignore. In an elaborate process, the plants are boiled and then robbed of their third dimension with the help of a 50-ton hydraulic press and press oven, and finally attached to a thin stainless-steel plate.
The series consists exclusively of species not native to Central Europe. Many of these once “exotic” plants now decorate our offices and homes. To this day, they often bear the names given them by their European “discoverers.” Originally from Madagascar, the Bismarckia nobilis or Bismarck palm was dedicated to the first chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck. Previously, however, it went by its native name. These original names, many of which have been forgotten or are unknown today in the Global North, testify to the ongoing process of Europe’s appropriation of nature.
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Julius von Bismarck was born in 1983 in Breisach am Rhein, Germany, and grew up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Switzerland. By combining visual arts with other fields of research and experimentation, such as natural and social sciences, the results of Julius von Bismarck’s artistic practice can take various forms — from kinetic sculptures and photographs to video installations and landscapes. His works are characterized by the in-depth exploration of phenomena of perception and constructions of reality. The negotiation of nature as a socially constructed fiction is a core focus of his work.