The fall season has begun, time for a new AGA LAB online exhibition. Maybe you’ve already grabbed your hiking boots to head out into the woods or park to watch the colours change on the trees?
For some time now more and more nature is flowing into the AGA LAB studio. Forests, root structures and plant textures appear in many artworks. And no longer in the familiar form of a still life such as a vase of cut flowers or a composition of ripe fruits, but rather the liveliness and the organic and complex character of life that is not human, is depicted. The intriguing and intelligent communication of trees and plants is the subject.
The growing knowledge about climate change also draws the attention of artists to the rich and fluid life that surrounds us.
Wood Wide Web, the title of this sixth online AGA LAB exhibition, comes from the book In Search of the Mother Tree (2021) by professor of forest ecology Suzanne Simard. She grew up in the woods and has been looking at trees all her life. Through her attention and research she has been able to learn surprising wisdom from forests. Such as knowledge about the great communication web of the roots of the trees (the wood wide web) through which not only water and food are distributed among themselves but also practical wisdom such as ‘posts of past struggles’, which give the receiving trees a head start and the possibility to prepare themselves for possible danger.
This online exhibition full of forest wisdom shows such beautiful complex organic structures. Please enjoy!
‘Trees, for example, carry the memory of rainfall. In their rings we read ancient weather—storms, sunlight, and temperatures, the growing seasons of centuries. A forest shares a history, which each tree remembers even after it has been felled.’
Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
“The forest has wisdom, consciousness and healing power.”
Suzanne Simard
Many thanks to the artists:
About the AGA LAB & KNUSTPRESS at AGA LAB online exhibitions
This is the sixth edition of our online exhibitions. An initiative of artist/curator Barbara Collé.
Every month we compile a new series in which the different printing techniques that AGA LAB and KNUST @ AGA LAB have to offer, such as Riso printing, screen printing, toyobo, digital printing and etching. The works are made by artists and designers who regularly work in our studio and / or participated in our AIR program.
Read more about our AiR program >
Do you also want to get started with your work / project at AGA LAB? Read here what AGA LAB has to offer and how it works >