Exhibition - PARADEISER

07.09 - 29.09.26

The historical term “apple of paradise” forms the starting point of the exhibition “Paradeiser.” The title connects the apple of paradise with the German term Paradeiser, meaning tomato, opening up a field of associations between myth and the present, nature and culture, memory and the future.

At the heart of the exhibition is the garden—not as an idyllic refuge, but as a place of constant transformation. Growth and decay, care and intervention, abundance and loss coexist. The garden thus becomes an image of a living network of relationships in which ecological, social, and cultural processes overlap.

“Paradeiser” does not understand paradise as a lost place of origin, but as a model for a relationship with the world. The garden becomes a place where questions of care, coexistence, and mutual dependence converge. Against the backdrop of contemporary ecological and social change, four artistic positions explore how the relationship between human and more-than-human forms of life can be reconsidered.

The works of Julia Bornefeld, Florian Borkenhagen, Philipp Putzer, and Mischa Sanders approach these questions from different perspectives. Julia Bornefeld combines painting, sculpture, photography, and installation to create experiential spaces in which material, body, space, and perception influence one another. Florian Borkenhagen takes the everyday as his point of departure and, through deconstruction and reinterpretation, transforms familiar objects into unexpected carriers of new meaning. The artistic duo Philipp Putzer and Mischa Sanders work with found objects, fragments, and drawings, transforming them into sculptural structures suspended between nature and architecture, growth and decay, memory and imagination.

Together, the four positions offer a perspective on a world in which nothing exists in isolation. Humans, animals, plants, objects, and landscapes are embedded in multiple and interconnected relationships. Gardens thus emerge as places of memory, transformation, and becoming spaces in which nature is not merely a backdrop or a resource, but an autonomous counterpart: vulnerable, resilient, and in constant transformation.

“Paradeiser” invites visitors to reconsider familiar ideas of nature and human existence. The future is not conceived as a return to an idealised paradise, but as a shared practice of being-with: an ongoing process of care, responsibility, and negotiation within a complex web of life.

The exhibition “Paradeiser” at Vijion Art Gallery in Pontives will be open to visitors as part of the Artfestival Gröden from 7 to 20 September 2026, daily from 4 to 7 pm.

The opening will take place on Saturday, 12 September 2026, at 11 am, followed by an aperitif.