Es ist heiß, Ende August im Victoriahaus des Botanischen Garten München; die Luft ist feucht, fühlt sich schwer an. In dem Becken in der Mitte des Gewächshauses ruhen Seerosenblätter auf dem Wasser. Lilafarbene, gelbe und weisse Blüten ragen zwischen ihnen hervor. Schon die Blätter, die Durchmesser von knapp zwei Metern haben können, beeindrucken. Die Blicke der Besucher*innen zieht aktuell aber auch etwas anderes auf sich. Über dem Becken, den Blüten und Blättern, ohne die Ruhe der Szenerie zu stören, hängen und drehen sich mehrere Mobiles. An gebogenen Stäben sind Scheiben in Form von Kreisen, abgerundeten Rechtecken, stilisierten Blütenkelchen befestigt. Sie schillern, manche erscheinen mehr blau, andere gelb, Farben und Transparenz changieren je nach Lichteinfall und Blickwinkel. Sie werfen Reflexionspunkte auf die Seerosenblätter und spiegeln rund um das Becken wachsende Pflanzen wider. Die sich langsam drehenden Scheiben zu beobachten, hat etwas Beruhigendes, Faszinierendes. Die Installation "miro modo" der Künstlerin Evalie Wagner ist Teil des Festival Flower Power; in ganz München verteilt gibt es Ausstellungen rund um Blüten. Der lateinische Titel des Werks im Victoriahaus lässt sich mit "auf wunderbare Weise" übersetzen. Ob sie einen auf eine solche in den Bann zieht, kann man bis zum 1. Oktober selbst herausfinden.
Anna Martin
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It is hot, late August in the Victoria House of the Munich Botanical Garden; the air is humid, feels heavy. In the basin in the middle of the greenhouse, lily pads rest on the water. Purple, yellow and white flowers protrude between them. The leaves alone, which can be almost two metres in diameter, are impressive. But something else is currently attracting the attention of visitors. Above the basin, the blossoms and leaves, without disturbing the tranquillity of the scenery, several mobiles hang and rotate. Discs in the form of circles, rounded rectangles and stylised calyxes are attached to bent rods. They shimmer, some appearing more blue, others yellow, colours and transparency changing according to the incidence of light and the angle of view. They cast reflection points on the water lily leaves and reflect plants growing around the basin. There is something calming and fascinating about watching the slowly turning discs. The installation "miro modo" by the artist Evalie Wagner is part of the Flower Power festival; there are exhibitions all over Munich about flowers. The Latin title of the work in the Victoria House can be translated as "in a wonderful way". You can find out for yourself until 1 October whether it casts a spell on you in such a way.
Anna Martin

An interview by Karla Cloete for Arthelps

Evalie Wagner is an interdisciplinary artist working with flora, painting and doing site-specific works, who describes her style as “poetic and conceptual”; her work has a great deal of metaphorical resonance. Her background in agriculture and gardening is evident in her artwork and design. She sees herself as a “visual storyteller” who immerses herself and her viewers in the theme.

Working interdisciplinarily is very important to her: “This allows me to approach space and a theme in a completely new way each time. I also like the close connection between design and craft. How I start remains the same, but the execution can vary, which gives me a certain freedom that I really appreciate.”

She describes her process as both impulsive and meticulous, and it shows in her work. Avantgarden retains the careful precision of a scientific exhibit with a whimsical free spirited air.

In previous interviews she has said that becoming an artist simply happened, but she thinks differently now, “The urge to create was somehow always there, but to become an artist, it took a lot of stamina.”

For Wagner, Avantgardening is the name she gives to her nature works: “A conglomerate of the avant-garde, an aesthetic and political movement that usually initiates new ideas and developments, and the garden, a man-made piece of nature,” she says about the name. “An attempt at a new perspective on the perception of the plant environment around us.”

This walk-in installation at the Botanical Garden of the University of Vienna features a "hanging herbarium" featured in a greenhouse. This installation imbues the viewer with the exact sense of wonderment she told us she hopes to inspire.

Her work is immersive and wonderfully whimsical. She takes advantage of the natural shapes and colours found in nature.

“I wanted to open other people's eyes to the nature they have in front of them. It's mostly about opening the senses to create empathy,” she said of her Avantgarden installation. “I think you need to be emotionally involved to care about anything, including the environment.”
Her works bring us back into contact with nature even in urban and industrial spaces in an ever-increasing era in which we move further from it. Wagner describes something called “plant blindness”—our brains glossing over the plants in our environments and deliberately challenging us.

The ephemeral materials she chooses are a deliberate choice and continuously inspire her: “In a world full of things, I find it interesting to work with material that composts and disappears again. The process of change always plays a big part in working with plants and is also a challenge every time, but I think that makes an installation like this particularly intense.”

Her Vienna Design Week project, Naturphilia, brings together nature in design to transform what could be an everyday space into a wondrous wild habitat. The space feels simultaneously intentional and wild, natural and domestic—nature is encroaching on our human habitat.

Ombrosa creates a similar effect with a darker undertone. “Plants are the protagonists” of this installation standing in stark contrast with the urban space. The green, soft shapes and uneven textures of citrus trees and palms standing against the smooth textures and angular shapes of the room.

“There's always been a place for plants in art,” she said to Plantopia. “Over the centuries, botany has been used as a metaphorical means of investigating impressions, cultural influences and social and aesthetic questions.” Her work aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal for Responsible Consumption and Production.

So what does the future hold for her? Well, she’s got plenty of ideas: “At the moment I am working on a tiny glass house, a hanging plant installation in a church is being planned and maybe there will be a project that takes me to the mountains. And meadows, I have that thing for meadows. That will definitely be a project one day.”

From the article and panel discussion with Abby Klinkenberg from Fair Planet:

What kinds of things do we miss when we only look at the natural world from a scientific perspective? How does your work bring attention back to those aspects?

Evalie Wagner: You can look at plants from different perspectives: you can look at them from the perspective of a botanist or a doctor, for example. Mine is more like that of a designer: I look at plants in terms of their different shapes, appearances and colors. With the "Avantgarden" installation, I wanted to open other people's eyes to the nature they have in front of them. It's mostly about opening the senses to create empathy. I think you need to be emotionally involved to care about anything, including the environment. 
Some people need research or data to be engaged with something, others need shapes and colors. I understand my installation as a very open and transformative phase. It illustrates the complexity of attempting to comprehend nature with the mind alone. It's always about leaving a question and answering some at the same time. Leaving a door open...

Evalie Wagner creates interventions with and in nature under the slogan “Avantgardening”. In this article, the Austrian artist, whose space-defining works can be seen as visual metaphors that primarily investigate social and contemporary questions, takes a closer look at the currently flourishing Instagram trends surrounding hashtags such as #HouseplantCommunity and #UrbanJungles and at the cultural-historical origins of this phenomenon. The virtual playground of this guest article disguised as an interview was a Google Doc, while its driving force was the raging #PlantFever.

Matthias K. Heschl: Your works emerge at the interface between botany, architecture and history. What roles are played by cultural-historical references and by the aesthetic of plants in these conceptual spatial arrangements?

Evalie Wagner: There's always been a place for plants in art. Over the centuries, botany has been used as a metaphorical means of investigating impressions, cultural influences and social and aesthetic questions. The history of art contains numerous examples of this. From the murals of Pompeii to the baroque bouquets of the Flemish masters, which essentially presented the latest varieties or imports from the colonies. Even architecture was shaped by plants. The hype surrounding the orangeries and palm houses of the 18th and 19th centuries continues to shape the appearance of some buildings. For purposes of representation, plants were transported over the Alps in huge numbers and cultivated in elegant winter gardens. The ways in which gardens and parks were laid out and viewed tells us much about the politics and the philosophy of any age. Humanism influenced the garden architecture of the Renaissance, was moulded in the baroque and led to the convoluted visual axes of the English landscape garden, which better reflected the spirit of Empfindsamkeit (the artistic epoch commonly referred to in English as Sentimentalism). Moreover, we could fill books showing how we plant our front gardens, living rooms, graves and roundabouts. In my work, I reflect upon this complex relationship between people, aesthetics and nature. I would like to express this with a sentence from the landscape architect and painter Roberto Burle Marx: “A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant – rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance – but it is also a colour, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself.”

MKH: You create individual and downright poetic assemblies of plants that are adapted to each spatial setting. To what extent does the existing space determine the selection and composition of the elements that you use? How can mundane design elements such as petals, leaves, mulch and branches be combined to create such an iconic image?

EW: Every space consists of facts and possibilities. I seek to create visible or invisible relationships between the space and my work or lend it new meaning with the help of contentual or artistic metaphors. For example, the starting point for the exhibition in Schloss Hollenegg [> virtual tour], which was devoted to new design concepts, was an old watercolour painting of the courtyard, full of exuberant Mediterranean plants. This is a scenario that, thanks to climate change, would be quite possible here and now. Combined with Italo Calvino's insurgent novel The Baron in the Trees, this formed the basis for my installation, in particular with reference to the choice of elements. In this way, the narrative of the plants extended far beyond the borders of pure botany and told of dystopias and utopias in equal measure. They are iconic simply due to their impermanence, which eventually demands an image that remains.

MKH: The Instagram channels that surround us today also encourage a combination of the iconic and the impermanent. How do you see this current trend towards featuring plants? To what extent does this content demand an investigation that is as far-reaching as yours?

EW: This boom in greenery on the internet is many-faceted. On the one hand, it reflects our longing for nature and, on the other hand, it embodies a pleasure that is principally generated by outward appearances. A visual trend, reinforced by advertising and availability. Plants become a set design, the focus is on forms and colours and often rarely on ecological awareness. In the 1990s, two biologists coined the term “plant blindness”. In contrast with our awareness of animals, most people are aware of plants either indirectly or not at all – and if they are, only in the form of “bushes” or “flowers”. It is astonishing how few of the plants that surround us every day can be named by most people at our latitude. This is where the plant recognition and plant care apps that are currently flourishing and this collective exchange on a range of platforms come into play. It appears paradoxical, but it is the digital world that is helping us to get our bearings in an analogue one.

MKH: In the urban context this is all often interpreted as a return to a version of nature that never actually existed. Despite this, however, do you believe that this growth in (stylised) green content, set as it is against the background of the climate crisis, could lead to us paying more attention to the plants around us?

EW: While rural front gardens often struggle to retain their variety, urban greenery is booming. Rather than merely demonstrating a desire to be self-sufficient, the cultivation of both indoor and outdoor spaces principally offers potential for social identification. This often reflects a search for a supposedly lost authenticity that takes a wide range of forms – from bee-friendly balconies to costly examples of some special instagrammable species. Not, however, that this is always accompanied by ecological awareness. These are often imported goods that are produced economically with the help of a lot of chemicals and that can be bought cheaply in the garden centre or at much greater cost in a concept store. And yet everything that we experience when dealing with plants is elementary, they grow, thrive and die. It is this that makes them our allies. At the end of the day, every plant that we bring home represents an attempt to get closer to nature and it is not uncommon for this to lead to an increased awareness of the vegetation that surrounds us.

MKH: So where does this trend come from? And how is it changing?

EW: It's not really so new. Over the centuries, multitudes of researchers wandered around seeking to unlock the botanical secrets of the continents. The first potted plants arrived in Europe by ship, often from the colonies, and ended up, from the Biedermeier period onwards, inside our homes. Like paintings and books, plants were presented on flower stands in salons as symbols of prosperity. In England, this led to a form of “fern fever”. Huge examples were exhibited alongside palms on specially built jardinières. The progressively better heated living rooms of large late nineteenth-century villas with their huge windows offered more and more space for such flowering plants as clivia or begonias. Not until the Bauhaus, with its architecture of full-height windows and its elimination of the strict division between indoors and outdoors, was there an attempt to render indoor plants, which were perceived as conservative, obsolete. And yet the opposite happened, because these rooms offered even better growing conditions. Since then, each decade has had its fashionable plants and now we find ourselves in an omnipresent “plant fever” – where the invitation into the living room is virtual, millefleur has been replaced by monstera and #PlantBox is the new jardinière.

MKH: What, in turn, is the impact of all this on your work? Or, put another way: Do you benefit as an artist from this broader awareness of botanical subjects?

EW: The reception has changed somewhat. As a student I was laughed at for concerning myself with something as apparently insignificant as a flower, when there were so many more radical and political issues that one could address. The interface between art and nature was long the reserve of highly contemplative Land Art. I previously saw this as avant-garde, but now I consider it to be essential. The basic subject of the botanical installation is found in ephemera. In a world in which we produce more and more stuff, I believe that experimenting with a transient medium is radical, political and poetic, in equal measure. Of course the current phenomenon contributes to a sort of popularity and yet, as an artist, I'm continuously finding that I neither belong to, nor don't belong to, a #PlantCommunity but am, rather, alone in my own garden with my thoughts.Evalie Wagner creates interventions with and in nature under the slogan “Avantgardening”. In this article, the Austrian artist, whose space-defining works can be seen as visual metaphors that primarily investigate social and contemporary questions, takes a closer look at the currently flourishing Instagram trends surrounding hashtags such as #HouseplantCommunity and #UrbanJungles and at the cultural-historical origins of this phenomenon. The virtual playground of this guest article disguised as an interview was a Google Doc, while its driving force was the raging #PlantFever.

Matthias K. Heschl: Your works emerge at the interface between botany, architecture and history. What roles are played by cultural-historical references and by the aesthetic of plants in these conceptual spatial arrangements?

Evalie Wagner: There's always been a place for plants in art. Over the centuries, botany has been used as a metaphorical means of investigating impressions, cultural influences and social and aesthetic questions. The history of art contains numerous examples of this. From the murals of Pompeii to the baroque bouquets of the Flemish masters, which essentially presented the latest varieties or imports from the colonies. Even architecture was shaped by plants. The hype surrounding the orangeries and palm houses of the 18th and 19th centuries continues to shape the appearance of some buildings. For purposes of representation, plants were transported over the Alps in huge numbers and cultivated in elegant winter gardens. The ways in which gardens and parks were laid out and viewed tells us much about the politics and the philosophy of any age. Humanism influenced the garden architecture of the Renaissance, was moulded in the baroque and led to the convoluted visual axes of the English landscape garden, which better reflected the spirit of Empfindsamkeit (the artistic epoch commonly referred to in English as Sentimentalism). Moreover, we could fill books showing how we plant our front gardens, living rooms, graves and roundabouts. In my work, I reflect upon this complex relationship between people, aesthetics and nature. I would like to express this with a sentence from the landscape architect and painter Roberto Burle Marx: “A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant – rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance – but it is also a colour, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself.”

MKH: You create individual and downright poetic assemblies of plants that are adapted to each spatial setting. To what extent does the existing space determine the selection and composition of the elements that you use? How can mundane design elements such as petals, leaves, mulch and branches be combined to create such an iconic image?

EW: Every space consists of facts and possibilities. I seek to create visible or invisible relationships between the space and my work or lend it new meaning with the help of contentual or artistic metaphors. For example, the starting point for the exhibition in Schloss Hollenegg [> virtual tour], which was devoted to new design concepts, was an old watercolour painting of the courtyard, full of exuberant Mediterranean plants. This is a scenario that, thanks to climate change, would be quite possible here and now. Combined with Italo Calvino's insurgent novel The Baron in the Trees, this formed the basis for my installation, in particular with reference to the choice of elements. In this way, the narrative of the plants extended far beyond the borders of pure botany and told of dystopias and utopias in equal measure. They are iconic simply due to their impermanence, which eventually demands an image that remains.

MKH: The Instagram channels that surround us today also encourage a combination of the iconic and the impermanent. How do you see this current trend towards featuring plants? To what extent does this content demand an investigation that is as far-reaching as yours?

EW: This boom in greenery on the internet is many-faceted. On the one hand, it reflects our longing for nature and, on the other hand, it embodies a pleasure that is principally generated by outward appearances. A visual trend, reinforced by advertising and availability. Plants become a set design, the focus is on forms and colours and often rarely on ecological awareness. In the 1990s, two biologists coined the term “plant blindness”. In contrast with our awareness of animals, most people are aware of plants either indirectly or not at all – and if they are, only in the form of “bushes” or “flowers”. It is astonishing how few of the plants that surround us every day can be named by most people at our latitude. This is where the plant recognition and plant care apps that are currently flourishing and this collective exchange on a range of platforms come into play. It appears paradoxical, but it is the digital world that is helping us to get our bearings in an analogue one.

MKH: In the urban context this is all often interpreted as a return to a version of nature that never actually existed. Despite this, however, do you believe that this growth in (stylised) green content, set as it is against the background of the climate crisis, could lead to us paying more attention to the plants around us?

EW: While rural front gardens often struggle to retain their variety, urban greenery is booming. Rather than merely demonstrating a desire to be self-sufficient, the cultivation of both indoor and outdoor spaces principally offers potential for social identification. This often reflects a search for a supposedly lost authenticity that takes a wide range of forms – from bee-friendly balconies to costly examples of some special instagrammable species. Not, however, that this is always accompanied by ecological awareness. These are often imported goods that are produced economically with the help of a lot of chemicals and that can be bought cheaply in the garden centre or at much greater cost in a concept store. And yet everything that we experience when dealing with plants is elementary, they grow, thrive and die. It is this that makes them our allies. At the end of the day, every plant that we bring home represents an attempt to get closer to nature and it is not uncommon for this to lead to an increased awareness of the vegetation that surrounds us.

MKH: So where does this trend come from? And how is it changing?

EW: It's not really so new. Over the centuries, multitudes of researchers wandered around seeking to unlock the botanical secrets of the continents. The first potted plants arrived in Europe by ship, often from the colonies, and ended up, from the Biedermeier period onwards, inside our homes. Like paintings and books, plants were presented on flower stands in salons as symbols of prosperity. In England, this led to a form of “fern fever”. Huge examples were exhibited alongside palms on specially built jardinières. The progressively better heated living rooms of large late nineteenth-century villas with their huge windows offered more and more space for such flowering plants as clivia or begonias. Not until the Bauhaus, with its architecture of full-height windows and its elimination of the strict division between indoors and outdoors, was there an attempt to render indoor plants, which were perceived as conservative, obsolete. And yet the opposite happened, because these rooms offered even better growing conditions. Since then, each decade has had its fashionable plants and now we find ourselves in an omnipresent “plant fever” – where the invitation into the living room is virtual, millefleur has been replaced by monstera and #PlantBox is the new jardinière.

MKH: What, in turn, is the impact of all this on your work? Or, put another way: Do you benefit as an artist from this broader awareness of botanical subjects?

EW: The reception has changed somewhat. As a student I was laughed at for concerning myself with something as apparently insignificant as a flower, when there were so many more radical and political issues that one could address. The interface between art and nature was long the reserve of highly contemplative Land Art. I previously saw this as avant-garde, but now I consider it to be essential. The basic subject of the botanical installation is found in ephemera. In a world in which we produce more and more stuff, I believe that experimenting with a transient medium is radical, political and poetic, in equal measure. Of course the current phenomenon contributes to a sort of popularity and yet, as an artist, I'm continuously finding that I neither belong to, nor don't belong to, a #PlantCommunity but am, rather, alone in my own garden with my thoughts.

About Evalie Wagner

Avantgardening is the name given by the artist Evalie Wagner to her interventions with and in nature. Oscillating between poetics and concept, she creates space-defining works that can be seen as visual metaphors with broad historical and aesthetic connotations that investigate social and contemporary questions.

Text: Evalie Wagner, Sparringspartner: Matthias K. Heschl , May 2021

Summerspecial mit Evalie Wagner im Botanischen Garten Linz

What do you do?
I work across several disciplines, mostly painting and site specific installations with a focus on floral aesthetics.

Where are you from?
Upper Austria

Your style in 3 words?
Poetic and conceptual.

Your weakness? Your strength?
Too idealistic, but very imaginative.

What makes you different?
My background - agriculture and gardening, that´s somehow special in the art universe.

When did you decide to become an artist?
It happened, it wasn´t a decision.

What do you find most fascinating about the creative process/your work?
Research, intuition and associations leading to a new result.

A few words about your favourite creation?
Avantgarden was kind of a giant walk-in herbarium with leaves and flowers fixed on long fabric panels hanging down from the ceiling in a greenhouse. The wind gently moved the cloth and sunlight fell through the glass, merging the artificial with the natural.

Someone else’s work that inspired or inspires you…
I often come across the same names, but forget them immediately unless I discover them again…recently I stumbled again upon Lucius Burckhardt and his “Strollology”.

Who would you like to work with someday and why?
Recording a song with a musician and renovating an old house with an architect.
I´m always up for collaborations ;)

A new project coming up or an idea you want to work on?
I look into a phenomen called plant blindness.

Finish the sentence „More important than my career is…“
… staying goodmooded and healthy, with a loving surrounding.

When the going gets tough…
I remember that everything will be just a memory at the end.

Put on your future vision glasses: What direction is our generation moving in, what will our world look like in 50 years?
Que será, será - what will be, will be.

What would you do if you could change the World?
I would slow down the world a little bit, in general - that would save lives, souls and nature.

If the universe is everything and it’s expanding, what is it expanding into?
I don´t have any idea!

Tell us about your future plans…
There will be a few occasions to flirt with plants, but I am really excited about my artist residency at the Villa Lena Foundation in Tuscany, Italy this autumn.

Your city’s favourite spots (any location/ club/ shop/ gallery…)?
I don´t live in a city,... but I love driving around in the countryside. There is an area called “Salzkammergut”, which I really enjoy.

Last but not least: what is your favourite Song?
There can never be ONE favourite song, but there are a lot of songs I often put on repeat, for example: Nada - Ma che freddo fa!

One last statement please: „Wood or stone, gold or art?“
Catgold & firewod - both remind me on good days in my childhood.

In our artist portrait of this week we introduce you to the artist Evalie Wagner, who currently lives and works in Upper Austria and Vienna. Floral aesthetics as are a main topic of the artists interdisciplinary work in which she creates a diverse range of site-specific installations that can be experienced by the viewer. Under the title AVANTGARDEN the artist just recently exhibited her imposing installations at the Botanical Garden of the University of Vienna.

Galerie Rudolf Leeb:
“How do your artworks relate to the space in which they are exhibited?”

Evalie Wagner:
“An empty space is made up of facts and possibilities. I deal a lot with architecture and art history and adapt the exhibition project very consciously to the respective place. In doing so, I draw sketches, look for associations and then connect the space visibly or invisibly in relation to my work. These are small aesthetic or content-related connotations and metaphors that capture the space, its surroundings and its history or shift it in a different perspective.”

Galerie Rudolf Leeb:
“What role does transience play in your artworks, in which you very often include plants and flowers that naturally begin to wither after a while? Do your artworks exist for a limited period of time?”

Evalie Wagner:
“In my exhibitions, I combine organic and inorganic materials. Objects and painting capture time and bring it to a standstill. But the essence of nature is change. For botanical installations, this special circumstance means a lot of planning, knowledge and spontaneity at the same time. In May things look a little different than in October, and the work of art also changes over the duration of the exhibition. In this volatility the special magic is shown, only a photo, an impression or feeling remains.”

Galerie Rudolf Leeb:
“I saw a video of your great exhibition Avantgarden at the Botanical Garden in Vienna. The plants created a sort of whispering sound when they touched the ground. Is the production of noise and the hearing experience a motive that you have consciously pursued in this work?”

Evalie Wagner:
“From the very beginning, Avantgarden centered around the idea of playing with many different levels and elements. The soundtrack is a song by Benoît Pioulard, inspired by untouched natural spaces. In addition to light, the smell and the wind, which weighed the fabric trays back and forth and made the dried plants rustle, joined this sound in the glass house. Thus the artificial and the natural worked together. I had to think of a phrase by the Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia: ‘A plant is a machine that binds the earth to the sky.’
It’s hard to say better.”

Interview by Eva Keller for Galerie Rudolf Leeb, 2020
Photo by David Schermann

Interview with Markus Reindl for OÖ Stories

Vergängliche Kunst-Installation aus Pflanzen schafft die Künstlerin Evalie Wagner aus Waizenkirchen. Sie zeigt damit historische, philosophische oder ästhetische Aspekte unserer Verhältnisses zur Natur auf. Profundes Fachwissen und Flexibilität, was die Materialbeschaffung angeht, sind bei ihrer Arbeit wichtig. 

Meterhohe Stoffbahnen mit darauf befestigten getrockneten Pflanzenteilen zogen sich heuer durch das 70 Meter lange Winterglashaus des Botanischen Gartens in Wien. Die Installation "Avantgarden" gehörte zu den meistbeachteten der oberösterreichischen Künstlerin Evalie Wagner. Sie arbeitet für ihre Werke mit Pflanzen: "Meine Installationen sind vergänglich wie das Leben, wenn ich sie abbaue, zerbröseln sie und sind weg. Das ist radikal, aber auch sehr poetisch."
Die Waizenkirchnerin studierte nach einer landwirtschaftlichen Ausbildung Design, Textil, experimentelle Kunst und Malerei: "Daher vermischen sich viele Bereiche bei mir. Je nachdem, was ich sagen will, wähle ich das passende Medium aus." Das Verhältnis zwischen Mensch und Natur wird bei Wagner je nach Werk von  vielen Seiten beleuchtet und auch in Bezug zu Garten- und Kunstgeschichte gestellt. 
Hinter den beeindruckenden Installationen steckt aber auch jede Menge Organisation und Flexibilität, schließlich müssen die Pflanzen irgendwoher kommen. Manche werden gekauft, andere gezogen, und als besonders verlässlicher Parter hat sich der Botanische Garten in Wien erwiesen: "Mittlerweile hab ich einen guten Draht zu den Gärtnern dort. Mit denen  verhandle ich dann richtig darüber, welchen Pflanzenteile ich schneiden darf, da wird genau definiert, wie viele Äste, wie viele Zentimeter und von wo sie herausgeschnitten werden dürfen." Wenn Not am Mann ist, muss aber schon auch einmal der Garten der Mama für das nächste grüne Kunstwerk herhalten...

"How as a designer do you integrate a social responsibility towards the environment in your practice?”

Growing up in the countryside sharpened my senses for natural cycles and how everything is connected. Many of the materials I use for my art are of natural origin and therefore ephemeral. It is not a question of designing a better version of nature, but to open peoples' eyes for the environment they are surrounded by.


“How do you plan to bring more wilderness in your everyday life?"

In fact, I am mostly confronted with the opposite question: How can I bring more structure into my wilderness, as living with and from arts and being surrounded by nature and animals saves me from leading a too mundane lifestyle. Not taming my ideas and walking barefoot as often as possible is probably my best recipe to walk on the wild side. 

Aus dem Vollen schöpft Evalie Wagner, die Stipendiatin der KUNSTSAMMLUNG des Landes OÖ während ihres Aufenthalts im Atelierhaus Salzamt in Linz.

Farbmuster, Literatur, Bilder und Materialproben dienen ihr als Moodboards und Handapparat für die Projekte, die sie hier erarbeitet. Etwa eine Szenografie in einem historischen Schloss oder eine Installation in einem Botanischen Garten. Eine durchaus herausfordernde Rolle als Vermittlerin zwischen Natur, Wissenschaft, Ästhetik und Kunst.

Florale Materialien bilden oft den Ausgangspunkt ihrer Arbeiten, die sie in den unterschiedlichsten Formaten und Techniken umsetzt. Von filigranen Kameen bis hin zu großformatigen Malereien, die von historischen, teils antiken Garten- und Naturansichten inspiriert sind.

by C. Schrenk / Land OÖ.

Woher kommt deine Faszination für Flora und Fauna?
Durch das Aufwachsen am Land ist eine tiefe Verbundenheit entstanden, die bis heute anhält. Versucht man, im Kopf frei zu sein, ist es nützlich, ein gutes Verhältnis zur Natur zu haben, neue Blickwinkel einzunehmen. Also: keine Scheu vor Romantik, aber auch nicht vor Kritik. 

Du liebst Blau, wofür steht die Farbe für dich?
Himmel, Meer und Seen tragen Blau. Es gibt unglaublich viele schöne Nuancen, am liebsten mag ich grünblaue Töne, hell stehen sie für Leichtigkeit und Weite, dunkel wirken sie unergründlich und geheimnisvoll.

Warum portraitierst du Menschen von hinten?
Weniger ist oft mehr. Die Portraits behalten ihre Autarkie, die Betrachtenden erhalten mehr Raum für eigene Empfindungen und Interpretationen. Ich halte Dinge gerne vage, ich mag die Poetik des Ungefähren. 

Welche fünf zeitgenössischen Künstler sollte man jetzt kennen?
Auf jeden Fall Johanna Tagada, Marina Rosa Weigl, den Maler Michael Borremans und Ragnar Kjartansson wegen seiner Installation The Visitors. Beim Arbeiten höre ich gerne Musik von Lou Doillon.

Interview by Claudia Hubmann

„Reizvoll finde ich, wie Wagner mehrere Malereien und Gegenstände miteinander kombiniert – etwa eine ausgestreckte Hand mit Fundstücken, einen Blütenrock und einen Strauß blauer Blumen –, sodass wunderschöne, sinnlich nostalgische Bilderreigen entstehen, die unterschiedliche Deutungen und Interpretationen zulassen. Es bleiben aber fragmentarische Geschichten, nie direkt und offensichtlich sondern stets assoziativ und geheimnisvoll.
Darin liegt schlussendlich die große Kraft einer guten Malerei, nämlich in der Inspiration und im Antrieb aus sich selbst zu schöpfen, aber im künstlerischen Ergebnis über sich selbst hinauszuwachsen und etwas allgemein Grundsätzliches auszudrücken, oft aber auch etwas Rätselhaftes, Unbenennbares in das Bild zu legen, das sich dem sprachlichen Ausdruck entzieht, um damit unseren Blick, unsere Emotionen und unseren Intellekt herauszufordern.“ 

Günther Oberhollenzer 

Evalie Wagner is an emerging Austrian artist. She earned an MFA in painting at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria and has a background in experimental art, textile design, and artistic education. Evalie often depicts flora and fauna in her portraits and still lifes, stemming from her experiences living on a farm in her youth. These works, which reference the Old Masters and more contemporary influences like Instagram, embody a yearning for nature and rural idyll in times of environmental, humanitarian, and financial crisis.

Evalie is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies. Most recently, she earned the Austrian Federal Chancellery Project Grant for ZOOart in Cuneo, Italy. She is also the recipient of the Bmukk Project Grant for the Young Artist Biennial in Ancona, Italy. Evalie’s works have been exhibited in various solo and group shows across Europe in countries including Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany.

What are the major themes you pursue in your work?
Making art keeps my mind awake. I get my inspiration from what surrounds me, with close links to contemporary subculture, music, literature, and design. I used to create albums with found footage from magazines, sketches, travel memories, and newspaper articles.

In my work, I refer to the Old Masters and depict contemporary portraits and still lifes with the spirit of my own generation. I mostly work with small formats and in an associative way, through metaphors. My work is mainly about a feeling, an atmosphere, that I want to convey. You can call it a form of a new romanticism, as I find that these themes from the 18th and 19th century are still up-to-date. In times of environmental, humanitarian, and financial crisis, you can find a return to tangible values, a yearning for rural idyll, and a oneness with nature. Even if it is not by chance, so much flora and fauna can be found in my work.

Basically, I try to dissolve themes into lightness, without following prevalent laws of logic and economy, and I want to leave a lot of freedom to the spectator. That’s why I call my work a “poetry of the approximate.” I like to keep things vague, by using cutouts and blurring. My paintings are like wild beasts–they do not disclose themselves immediately to everybody.

What was the best advice given to you as an artist?
I received many pieces of anxious advice, from people saying that I should not build my career on art in a time like this. That’s why I try to listen to myself and think that a certain idealism is a virtue. What I often heard, too, is that a reduction to only the essentials is important. In this sense, less is more. I try to keep to this sometimes, but not always.

Prefer to work with music or in silence?
Out of all art forms, music has the strongest emotional effect on me. Before starting to work, I always search for the appropriate soundtrack. Music carries me away into a mental landscape and situation. Currently, I listen to a lot of KEXP radio sessions and Woody Allen movie soundtracks, but my taste is changing all the time and is quite vast. It includes old blues songs, indie, folk, and even traditional folk and opera. Sometimes my art is inspired by lyrics, song lines or titles, such as Patrick Watson’s album Adventures in the Backyard, which I variegated into the title of my exhibition, Adventures in the Frontyard.

If you could only have one piece of art in your life, what would it be?
Maybe the installation The Visitors from the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, or a portrait by Elizabeth Peyton? Or a painting by Vilhelm Hammershoi? A jukebox with my favorite songs– is that valid, too? Maybe only a meteorite or a photo from my family album. A collection of Wes Anderson movies. No, a real Caravaggio, or the whole city of Rome, which is an artwork to me. Maybe only a little sketch from a hut in the forest from Hans Hueber, the art teacher of the young Empress Sisi, who died forgotten. You see, I threw the well-meant advice to concentrate on one essential thing immediately to the wind.

Who are your favorite writers?
I collect words and phrases. I have been doing that for a long time. Before I started studying art at university, I attended a high school for agriculture. At that time, I already wrote short stories and poems. I am less fascinated by certain authors, but more by a story, a line, an intellectual world. I exchange most of my books with my sister and friends. I also like to go to little bookshops, both with new and used books, but have to be careful not to buy books only according to their title and cover. In the end, to make me buy a book, the last sentence on the last page has to persuade me. I read everything, from the old classics to pop literature. I usually read several books at the same time. Currently, I am reading Der alte König in seinem Exil by Arno Geiger, Augenstern by Harry Mulisch, a book on professional horse education by Alfonso Aquilar, and Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier. I can’t fall asleep without reading a few lines.

http://canvas.saatchiart.com/art/one-to-watch/evalie-wagner