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Performing Arts, Creative Arts and Design

Paradise NOW! On Artificial Wilderness and Botanical Enclosures in Painting

When:

11 August - 15 August 2025

School:

Berlin Summer University of the Arts

Institution:

Berlin University of the Arts

City:

Berlin

Country:

Germany

Language:

English

Credits:

1 EC

Fee:

580 EUR

Interested?
Paradise NOW! On Artificial Wilderness and Botanical Enclosures in Painting

About

This five day intensive workshop explores the possibilities of developing pictorial spaces within the medium of painting by taking Berlins Botanic Garden as a starting point for eutopian and dystopian ideas of a contemporary paradise.

The idea of the Garden of Eden as a botanical hortus conclusus is certainly one of the oldest utopian concepts of humanity. With its unattainable and ideal state it functions as projection space of fictitious origin as well as refuge or even sanctuary. Its ambiguous vision combines uncontrollable and even threatening sides of nature with cultivated and human-made aspects of wilderness, which finally lead us to one of the most central and existential topics of the present day: our undoubted conflicting relationship to nature. The ambivalence between floral formations and staged proliferations can be best experienced in the large tropical greenhouses of the European metropolises, to whose hustle and bustle they have always been an alternating concept.

Course leader

Matthias Moravek

Target group

artists with basic drawing skills

Course aim

The seminar focuses on the individual artistic exploration of the topic and the development of unique pictorial ideas. The painterly approach can be both playful and systematic, drawing related strategies are as welcome as painting based collage-techniques.

Practical exercises on the construction of pictorial spaces complement the individual work and alternate with reflective phases and art historical impulses. A visit to Gemäldegalerie Berlin will contextualize the topic within the depth of art history.

Fee info

Fee

580 EUR

Interested?

When:

11 August - 15 August 2025

School:

Berlin Summer University of the Arts

Institution:

Berlin University of the Arts

Language:

English

Credits:

1 EC

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