Pk: We see a collection of blossom-hung, I venture to claim exotic branches in the pictorial language of early botanic watercolors and drawings that illustrate the discovery and subsequent classification of individual plants into species.
ML: … The series is oriented toward familiar botanic watercolors and drawings. Toward herbaria. Those collections and depictions of discovering, exploring, designating, and classifying our natural environment. Things are isolated for the purpose of being able to be examined more closely. The individual specimen is removed from its context. Embedded in a new order to facilitate understanding it. Compared with others to better designate it. A practice that constitutes the basis of our sciences and not only significantly influences our perception, but rather any understanding of thought in terms of civilization. Our access to things, to the world. The work is oriented toward this, not only in its portrayal but in its method as well. …
The photographs feature parts of plants that have been taken out of their spatial context, numbered, and classified. They remain in the temporal context of decay only, which is captured photographically day after day. I am less interested in the process itself than in individual moments during the process. This fraction of a second of momentary pause. The photographs show the fragility of the blossoms as they continue to hang on the plants and the convulsively enveloping petal, the waning color, the searching intertwining of dry branches and stems. …
And furthermore the irritation over the decaying blossoms striving upward as if in defiance of gravity. It is here at the latest that the work leaves the documentary format. …
Excerpt from a conversation about the exhibition “the secret life of plants” with Pk. Odessa Co