Lothar Schmitz

(German, b. 1952)
The installations in “Kunstwelten” (Worlds of Art) address evolutionary uncertainty
and the paradox of our decreasing ability to define what nature really is.
Two installations suggest futuristic “engineered” environments, part botanical
garden, part decorative landscaping, part genetic laboratory. Drawing on idealized
clichés of idyllic natural settings, the templates of corporate landscaping, and the
ubiquitous references to nature in interior design, they amalgamate ecologically
diverse environments. As miniature landscapes, concocted from artificial grass and
trees, rocks, and greenery, they suggest an improbable mix of plant species and
locales, becoming contrived artifacts, distorted in scale, and dysfunctional. These
installations also allude to hybridization and the transgression of inter-species
boundaries.
One older installation, Large Organism, parodies the renaissance notion of the
human body as a machine, governed by the then newly discovered Newtonian laws
of physics. This notion exemplified the “mechanistic” worldview, which eventually
led to the separation of scientific and artistic (humanistic) disciplines. In Large
Organism, an interconnected network of tubing appears to circulate red fluid
between several reservoirs. This installation has been previously shown at the
Phoenix Museum of Art and at the UCSB University Art Museum.
The planned final components of the exhibition primarily uses video projections and
investigates weather phenomena, using both time-lapsed imagery of actual weather
phenomena and animated weather maps. Projection onto the gallery walls as well
as onto shaped translucent screens is presently considered.

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