Daniel Hengst. Blooming Love, 2021. Exhibition opening at the RIXC Gallery. Photo: Kristīne Madjare

The Blooming Love exhibition by the German artist Daniel Hengst is open anew in "green regime" at the RIXC Gallery this week, tomorrow, November 17, and next week from Monday to Saturday, November 22-27, each day from 12:00 to 18:00. Take a look at the virtual bog and discover various plant species virtually!

The video teaser of the exhibition:
https://vimeo.com/595370869

Daniel Hengst. Blooming Love, 2021. Exhibition opening at the RIXC Gallery. Photo: Kristīne Madjare

While the viewer can't see into the distance of the virtual reality bogland, they can focus on the plants 'growing' nearby. The hostile disregard for the visitor's virtual body distills the visitor's experience to a disembodied gaze. It is a virtual nature, which we will perhaps have to experience in this manner to gradually bid farewell to the habitat of these plants.

Daniel Hengst. Blooming Love, 2021. Photo with the artist. Photo: Kristīne Madjare

Blooming Love is a VR artwork embedded in an exhibition setting that serves as a greenhouse for human/plant relationships: an artistic environment in which we encounter artificial plants in order to question our own relationship to them. The focus is on the appearance and form of the 28 key plant species of a Latvian raised bog. The coexistence of these species forms peat, which fundamentally contributes to the fact that about 30% of the world's CO2 continues to be stored in only 3% of the world's land area. Peat extraction and excessive forms of agriculture often irreversibly destroy or threaten these ecosystems. Experts say that the absence of humans from this nature is especially necessary to protect this ecosystem and its plant species. The artist has used VR as the main medium of this work, because through the potential of a speculative, immersive environment I want to make human feelings towards plants as well as our absence from them simultaneously renegotiable. In the course of my working process the artist has gradually withdrawn his own artistic, very human and thus always colonizing approach to the plant world.

Daniel Hengst. Blooming Love, 2021. Exhibition opening at the RIXC Gallery. Photo: Kristīne Madjare

The plants are now appearing through their form - without having to be part of a digital interaction - without having to be "good for something". At the same time, the presence of the human body in the virtual bog is concentrated to a mere gaze at the height of the mosses and bushes. An untouched raised bog which exists without the influence of humans may already be experienced only as virtual reality - as speculation or hallucination. Or does this encounter with the artificial plants allow us our absence from their originals and turn this desire into a reality?

The exhibition space is flooded with pink light and still images of digital plants are being displayed in the rhythm of the breath of a female person. The room itself is already somewhat reminiscent of a greenhouse, due to the light color and the type of lamps on the ceiling.

The VR is best experienced sitting on a swivel chair. The virtual experience starts also in digital pink light. Like a sight barrier, we can’t see into the distance of the virtual bogland but we focus on the plants ‘growing’ nearby and their constellation among themselves. The gaze is thus concentrated on the morphology of the plants. Slowly the visitor is moved through the virtual environment and after a minute the light changes to real-looking daylight.

The hostile disregard for the visitor’s virtual body, as well as the absence of further interactivity with this world, distills the visitor’s experience to a disembodied gaze. A presence in absence. Proximity without touch. It is a virtual nature, which we will perhaps have to experience in this manner to gradually bid farewell to the habitat of these plants – in the name of passionate love for them.

Daniel Hengst (*1981 in Leipzig/Germany) is a Berlin-based media artist & his artworks are often developed and presented in the framework of the performance arts. Since 2015, works in virtual reality, video and sound installations, sound performances, artistic research projects, and web projects have been created. The works deal with the society-changing potential of technologies or/and taking non-human subjects into account.

The exhibition is open in the "green regime" – please show a vaccination certificate and passport or ID when visiting the exhibition.

The exhibition is on view at the RIXC Gallery, Lencu iela 2 until November 27. Visit the exhibition on November 17 and from Monday to Saturday, November 22-27, each day from 12:00 to 18:00.

Further information:
http://festival2021.rixc.org 

Contacts: rixc@rixc.org, 67228478 (during the working hours of RIXC)

Support: The State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, EU program Creative Europe program within the framework of the EMAP / EMARE project, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, Goethe Institut in Riga.