Art and Cultivation

Artists help us to understand and anticipate the future. In an interview with Domus magazine, Andreas Kipar emphasised the collaboration with artists: „Art gives us interconnections that we couldn’t live without.“ This awareness has become increasingly essential for the work at LAND. Cultivating landscapes in urban and rural areas goes hand in hand with searching for new aesthetic solutions. This also includes dealing with open questions: How can art foster a new culture of perception regarding the relationship between nature and art and anticipate the future?

 

 

Metaphors in public space

Thomas Schönauer from Düsseldorf is one of the personalities Andreas Kipar has sought close collaboration with for years. The 71-year-old visual artist works with steel as well as glass sculptures. Schönauer’s series „Cultivator“, reminiscent of agricultural artefacts, is an example of tangible metaphors in public spaces. These works are highly aesthetic and admired for their material precision and harmonious design. They symbolise the constant pursuit of transformation, growth and renewal. In addition, there are technical-pictorial works in which, among other things, colours take on the function of forms. With his wide-ranging philosophical and theoretical interests, the artist is also a sought-after intellectual companion.

A conversation between Schönhauer and Kipar, published in 2024 in the publication „Verantwortung” (Creative Hive, Think&Grow Issue 1), illustrates the collaboration between the two. Here is an excerpt:

 

 

The artist as a friend and ally

Thomas Schönauer:  »What I particularly appreciate about our cooperation is the fact that, despite all the cognitive and rational connections and constraints in the planning requirements, you give the “soft factor” of the importance of art in the context of the planning a great deal of space, at least in theory. Was that a learning process for you?«

Andreas Kipar: »Working together means learning from each other. In this long process of my life experiences, the exchange with science, especially with art, has gained an ever-increasing importance and is now a natural part of it. In the design of living spaces – my main task and concern – art should not simply be a decorative accessory. Still, it should take on an active, moderating aesthetic role that impacts society. Apart from using nature to cultivate productive landscapes, it also leads to new aesthetic questions and solutions. Our joint appearance shows how this integration can take place.«

 

 

How it all began 

Andreas Kipar: »It all began with a project in 2013 at the IGS Hamburg with our installation „Thousand and One Illusions” – a blue CT Painting disc with over a thousand seedlings. In the Luthergarten in Wittenberg, you created the floating stainless steel cross in the sky as a monument of 500 or more trees growing since 2016 and radiating across the world. It takes up the lightness of growth in the trees and transforms it into the lightness of floating. The ideal message cannot be separated from the practical one when a protective shadow space opens up under the cross, connecting osmotically with the landscape of trees. In this way, art can play an active role in the epochal transformation process we are currently experiencing – and the artist, dear Thomas, can take the place of an ally.«

 

 

For the publication „Verantwortung“:
https://lnkd.in/ezBqVfeK

In general on the subject: the newsletter from Andreas Kipar „The Art of Cultivating – Cultivating Art“:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/art-cultivating-andreas-kipar-xau3f/