Regula Dettwiler

Flowers accompany us in our daily lives, engage our senses, and carry personal memories. Artist Regula Dettwiler is interested in the messages and stories that flowers convey. Using both natural and artificial plants, she creates a poetic installation for the ground floor of the Lower Austria State Gallery.

Herbarium of Feelings
The exhibition is divided into two parts. The "Herbarium of Feelings" brings together dried and pressed flowers and plants that people from Krems and the surrounding area have contributed. These plants symbolize an emotion, a feeling, or a special event that the owners associate with the plant. Dettwiler creates a herbarium in the tradition of natural history plant representations, replacing scientific classification with a poetically narrative categorization.

Spacious Installation
The second part of the exhibition is an artistic intervention featuring used plastic flowers that have been discarded in cemeteries. These artificial flowers are brought to new life in the exhibition, hung in large bundles and garlands from the ceiling. The impressive installation is specifically designed for the exhibition space of the Lower Austria State Gallery and evokes the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Between Transience and Permanence
Dettwiler plays with the difference between real and plastic flowers and their symbolic meanings. Real flowers, as products of nature, represent life, transience, and beauty in its purest form. However, their beauty is fleeting; they bloom and wither, reminding us of our own mortality. In contrast, artificial flowers are products of human creativity. They represent the desire to capture beauty and overcome transience, thus serving as symbols of permanence.