Susanna Taras

Blumen, Flowers, Fleurs

22 October 2022 to 26 March 2023

Like an invigorating elixir to counteract the often dreary and dark autumn and winter season, from 22 October 2022, the exhibition Blumen, Flowers, Fleurs by artist Susanna Taras will transform the museum into a colourful flower garden.

Susanna Taras resides and works in Potsdam, Germany. After studying painting in Stuttgart and art history in Munich, Tübingen and Stuttgart, she completed scholarships from the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg and the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. She has also been awarded several prizes, such as the State Prize of Baden-Württemberg. Since 1992, her works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Germany and abroad.

In her works, Susanna Taras focuses on floral ornamentation, the formal language of plants and the effect of materials. An example of this is the group of works entitled Wallflowers, which the artist herself describes as "painting with wool". The creative process used for Wallflowers corresponds to that of painting. However, instead of a brush and a colour palette, Susanna Taras uses specially dyed wool threads, which she incorporates into the canvas through a kind of carpet weaving. This results in large-format textile flower reliefs, whose three-dimensional and material effects are created by a wool pile. By means of this specific method, Susanna Taras has found her own artistic way to transform painting into sculpture and at the same time combine elements of painting, sculpture and textile art.

With Blumen, Flowers, Fleurs Susanna Taras presents us with her idea of an artificially designed garden. A sea of flowers and blossoms awaits us, some of which can be precisely identified botanically: roses, pansies, lilies, carnations, tulips, violets, forget-me-nots, orchids, bindweed, mallows, sweet peas, crocuses and peonies. Regardless of the season, we experience the beauty and distinctive features of each individual plant at the peak of its blooming. This simultaneity of flowering is unique: we may experience it in a botanical textbook, but never in nature.

Susanna Taras also breaks with reality in terms of scale and colour. She borrows the floral motifs from the plant world, but transfers them larger than life in bright, almost dazzling colours into a new environment. Nature is thus alienated and idealised at the same time.

Susanna Taras composes poetic spaces with her Wallflowers and facilitates a new approach to the beauty and uniqueness of nature. She presents visitors her own artistic fascination with nature, which moves between naturalness, art and artificiality. We experience the beauty of flowers, their exuberant abundance and lavish colourfulness as "radiant icons of life".