Bloom

Shown at Liste Basel with Ivan Gallery accompanied by Adrian Ganea.

    Having a shared interest in the scientific study of plants, Thea Lazăr and Adrian Ganea have been involved in numerous projects in the Botanical Gardens and Botanical Museums of Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest and have conducted extensive inquiries and in other similar institutions such as the Botanical Garden and the Botanical Museum in Berlin, Jardin des Plantes in Paris, the Conservatory and Botanical Garden of Geneva and The Botanical Gardens of the University of Debrecen just to name a few. Their interests are anchored around the scientific heritage of these institutions, with a clear fascination for the living and lifeless plants displayed here, such as the human-sized, ancient Welwitschia mirabilis removed from the Namibian desert in 1901, shown in the Botanical Museum in Cluj-Napoca, as well as the objects, paintings, books and rumours that populate these collections, such as Brassai Sámuel's fever dreams of the giant water lily - Victoria amazonica. Both artists have actually worked inside these institutions, accessing archives, filming specimens, creating site-specific responses. This positions them not as theorists commenting from outside but as practitioners embedded in the institutions they critique.