Flowers are Documents Arrangement I
(Composition / Support / Circulation / Ritual / Storytelling / Time)

ARRANGEMENT II
Opening: 22 June 2017, 7 pm

With: Milena Bonilla and Luisa Ungar, Martina della Valle in collaboration with Rie Ono
(Natalie Czech; Kapwani Kiwanga)
Episodes by: Haris Epaminonda, Oliver Laric, Paul Thuile, (Bruno Munari, Ettore Sottsass Jr).

Exhibition design in collaboration with Matthias Pötz and Ada Keller

Curated by Emanuele Guidi

Flowers are Documents — Arrangement I and II gathers and juxtaposes the positions of various artists whose ongoing interest in the subject of flower arrangement opens out into investigations of several parallel fields of research.

Drawing on this traditional ‘theme’ in painting and responding to the landscape of the South Tyrol with its rooted and blooming floricultural industry, the exhibition proposes practices that focus on and problematize notions of decoration and ornament, the ephemeral and the marginal.
Bouquets and ikebana become agents that make it possible to move alongside historical events and extreme presents so as to address issues like decolonization, legality, cultural identity and placemaking. At the same time they question what a document is by offering oblique ways of understanding both the nature of ‘the exhibit’ and the act of exhibiting itself.

As consecutive seasons, the two chapters Arrangement I and Arrangement II unfold around real flower compositions by four artists as an accumulation in space. Four new commissions are accompanied and supported by ‘episodes’ conceived by other artists, designers and writers: vases, books, videos and exhibition projects. By changing the configurations of the works, the successive arrangements intertwine the ‘event’ of blossoming with the process of ageing so as to stress the time-based nature of the ‘matter’ on display and to offer to the visitors a body of works that changes on a daily basis.

AGENDA AND PUBLIC PROGRAM

26 May, 7 pm: Opening Flowers are Documents – Arrangement I

13 Giugno: Newsletter broadcasting with I may not hurry it with a thousand poems my darling but nobody will stop it With all the Policemen in The World.zip* (2012-?), exhibition project by David Horvitz

17 June, 11 am: Tour of the exhibition Glashaus III – Serra III, at Gärtnerei Schullian Floricultura – Via Merano 75 A, Bolzano – with artist and curator Paul Thuile.

19 / 20 June: workshop Ikebana applied to Urban Territories by Martina della Valle and Rie Ono (for up to 12 people)

22 June, 7 pm: Opening Flowers are Documents – Arrangement II

Special Thanks to
Gärtnerei Schullian Floricultura, Bolzano
Mr. Enzo Parduzzi, Bolzano
Libreria delle Donne di Milan
Archivio Ettore Sottsass, Milan
Corraini Edizioni, Milan
Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris
Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin
Spazio A, Pistoia
ChertLüdde, Berlin
Rodeo Gallery, London
Capitain Petzel, Berlin
Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin

With the kind support by
Gärtnerei Schullian Floricultura, Bolzano
Provincia Autonoma dell’Alto Adige, Ripartizione Cultura
Regione Autonoma Trentino Alto Adige
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, Bolzano
Comune di Bolzano, Ripartizione Cultura