Reto Pulfer combines his artistic work with the work in his garden to create a “Gesamtkunstwerk”, a holistic work of art. Plants and their natural cycles are the basis of his activity - whether as an artist, author, musician, performer or as a gardener.
For the exhibition, he created an oval ground work in the garden. A bed meanders in it, planted with nettles and goldenrod that he dug up nearby and transplanted. By surrounding the bed with white, artificial-looking gravel, he borrows from the baroque landscape gardens of the 16th century. In this way, Reto Pulfer creates a situation in which the idea of an aesthetically and artificially designed plant meets native wild plants and invasive neophytes; in other words, those plants that are considered weeds, although they are valuable for insects and have a healing effect. The installation Nettle Snake (Earthworm) resembles a habitat that corresponds with Pulfer's ecological science fiction novel Gina, a Zustand Novel. Fantastic creatures between human, plant and animal are the protagonists of a post-apocalyptic world. A magical nettle grove is also part of it. The artist and author imagines haunting moments full of fabulosity, poetry and allusions to our present.
Reto Pulfer also integrates used textiles, including clothes or bed sheets, into this cosmos, which becomes apparent in the exhibition space. The work Phänologischer Pflanzkalender (Phenological Plant Calendar) was colored with goldenrod; it shows a calendar roughly oriented according to the flowering of plants.