Artist: Reto Pulfer
Exhibition title: Blitzzzustand
Curated by: Rahel Schrohe
Venue: Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
Date: July 10 – August 21, 2022
Photography: Bernd Hiepe, Dajana Lothert / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam
The exhibition as a breathing, organic entity: such is the “Blitzzzustand,” or “Flash State,” designed by the artist, author, and musician Reto Pulfer for KunstHaus Potsdam. Hand-dyed fabrics and knitted textiles, dried and living plants, sculptural works, paintings, and drawings constitute an immersive landscape experience for the exhibition visitors. “Blitzzzustand” is an experimental search for new sensual and physical ways of relating people and environments; a search that brings into question the distinction between subject and object, humans, and environment. Reto Pulfer, born in Bern in 1981, now lives in the Uckermark. His work has received numerous awards and has been exhibited internationally. “Blitzzzustand” is the first comprehensive presentation of his artistic work in Brandenburg.
Four years ago, Swiss artist Reto Pulfer, who is also an author and a musician, moved his life and work from Berlin to the Uckermark. Known for its exceptionally hilly landscape of many lakes, the Uckermark is also recognised for ecological agricultural practices and experimental horticulture. Since Pulfer has been living and working in the Uckermark, his work has gained additional relevance from an art historical and socio-political perspective.
Prior to his move, Pulfer’s extensive oeuvre had dealt in a variety of ways with the complex relationship of human beings to nature and the cosmos. Pulfer creates site-specific environments from worked textiles, everyday objects, and text fragments, which together he calls “states,” or “conditions.” In these states he has – from the beginning – integrated natural materials: mainly plants, woods, and stones, but also spices and tea. His practice encompasses a way of life and a kind of nourishment, the cultural characteristics of which he has made the subject of artistic investigation. In the Uckermark, Pulfer was able finally to create his own artist’s garden, wherein he observes the plants, animals, and insects that live there and the diverse cycles and rhythms distinct to that place. He experiments with wild and cultivated plants, with the symmetry and asymmetry in horticulture. Over time, these experiments and observations, as well as the plants he has grown himself and the confrontation with their history, their biological and aesthetic peculiarities and possibilities, have entered into his artistic work.
For his exhibition at KunstHaus Potsdam, Reto Pulfer has designed an immersive landscape that he calls “Blitzzzustand” (“flash state”). Fabrics – knitted, embroidered, hand-dyed and recycled – are joined together, tent-like; embedded in them are dried woods and plants. They are accompanied by paintings, drawings, and sculptural works. In the large exhibition space of the Kunstverein, small, rich spaces form. Interconnected with one another, they asked to be discovered and offer space to linger and reflect. A breathing, web-like landscape, intuitively graspable yet complex, it was conceived and generated from the location of the Kunstverein and exists only in this singular form. For the exhibition visitor, it is a synesthetic experience.
In the process, the visitor encounters elements of the Uckermark artist’s garden. Thus, the patterns on the knitted textiles designed by Pulfer are composed of earthworm shapes, stylized leaves, and blossoms. Interspersed text fragments poetically refer to life in the garden and meander between animating and systematizing the experience. Other fabrics have been dyed with plants from the artist’s garden. The works on view provide insight into Pulfer’s far-reaching thought and work processes and invite an exploration of the complex issues of symmetry and abstraction with which – including in horticulture – he is currently occupied. They show how Pulfer experiments with geometric patterns by means of combining, mirroring, and rotation, always in an attempt to create new ornamentation. Finally, the landscape garden installed in the courtyard of the KunstHaus, created from living wild plants, connects the inside and the outside and builds an additional direct bridge to Pulfer’s artist’s garden in the Uckermark.
In this temporary “Blitzzzustand” based on the complex relationship of humans to the environment, notions of form and order, of intuition and control, of fragility and balance are reconsidered. Relationships of interconnectedness that may often be obscured by the fictional framework of subject-object or human-environment can be experienced tangibly in this context. Pulfer’s “Blitzzzustand” creates a space in which the viewer can become involved in processes of becoming and can enter into the landscape.
The exhibition “Blitzzzustand” opens on July 10 with a performance by Reto Pulfer.
The supporting program for the exhibition “Blitzzzustand” was developed together with Reto Pulfer. Here the focus is on the connection to the art, culture, gardening, and ecological farming scene of the Uckermark. On July 23rd, visitors are welcomed to a garden tour in Angermünde / Greiffenberg, at the Verein zur Erhaltung und Rekultivierung von Nutzpflanzen (Vern e.V.). Vern e.V. preserves about 2,000 different old-crop varieties and makes them accessible to the general public. It also preserves knowledge about the cultivation, handling and use of the crop plants. On the occasion of the garden tour, Katrin Rust will show the association’s garden and explain its propagation strategies. On August 21st, a workshop on Blaudruck printing (a textile printing process employing blue dye) with the artist Annika Rixen, who lives in the Uckermark region, will take place at KunstHaus Potsdam. The workshop is held in conjunction with the closing event of the exhibition, which features a discussion between Jan Lindenberg, Eberswalde University of Applied Sciences, Katrin Rust, Vern e.V., as well as Annika Rixen and Reto Pulfer.
On the occasion of the exhibition “Blitzzzustand” at KunstHaus Potsdam, the publishing house BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE, designed by the graphic design studio H I T, is publishing the English translation of Reto Pulfer’s artist’s novel “Gina, ein zuständiger Roman.”
The exhibition “Blitzzzustand” is supported by the Swiss cultural foundation ProHelvetia and is a project within the framework of the theme year “Lebenskunst – Kulturland Brandenburg 2022.” It is created in close collaboration with the artist.
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Bernd Hiepe
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, mm zu r wird glückstor, 2022, knitted fabric, plant-dyed fabric, pencil on fabric, rope (detail), photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, Hoeuw, 2022, hay, agricultural fabric, reused fabric, ribbon, 110 x 80 x 60 cm, photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, tsiwtwin, 2021-2022, beanpole, embroidery on ribbon, 260 x 140 x 50 cm, photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, ortie leer, 2022, embroidery on plant dyed linen, 48 x 93 cm, photo: Bernd Hiepe
Reto Pulfer, landschaft simulator, 2022, plant material, fabric (detail), photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, landschaft simulator, 2022, plant material, fabric (detail), photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, performance, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, performance, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Bernd Hiepe
Reto Pulfer, Verungimpflichen, 2021, plant dye, pen, pencil, ribbon, fabric (detail), photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, Verungimpflichen, 2021, plant dye, pen, pencil, ribbon, fabric (detail), photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Bernd Hiepe
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Bernd Hiepe
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Bernd Hiepe
Reto Pulfer, grus grus, 2022, acrylic, pencil on wood, 25 x 11 x 3 cm, photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Bernd Hiepe
Reto Pulfer, Feil Falter, 2022, pencil on wood, 32 x 14 x 2 cm, photo: Dajana Lothert
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Bernd Hiepe
Reto Pulfer, Blitzzzustand, exhibition view, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, 2022, photo: Bernd Hiepe
Reto Pulfer, gemarkt, 2022, wild plants, vegetable plants, gardening pots, tub, 110 x 300 x 200, photo: Bernd Hiepe
Reto Pulfer, gemarkt, 2022, wild plants, vegetable plants, gardening pots, tub, 110 x 300 x 200, photo: Dajana Lothert
