Lois & Franziska Weinberger

The basis of the work produced by Austrian artist Lois Weinberger (°1947) since 1970, is a political, poetic concept regarding the concept of nature. His work consciously does not form a simplistic interpretation of the contradiction of nature and culture, or the primitive and civilised. Instead of presenting a romantic depiction of nature as purely primitive – a vision Weinberger considers a mere human invention – his work indicates that the concepts of ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ are undeniably fused. Other similar ambiguous contradictions also come together in his work. Lois and his wife Franziska Weinberger (°1953) started cooperating intensely from 1997, where the same themes were dealt with.

Many recurring themes and questions treated by the artist couple are blind faith in science (or the so-called objectivity of scientific research), the extol of nature, the ecologically arranged landscape and/or its aesthetics and socially determined ideas on nature. When dealing with these themes in their work, the artists leave room for the ‘non-intervention’ of nature, where they let nature simply be itself or grow into the installations.

Fundamental in the entire artistic production of Lois and Franziska Weinberger is their interest in uncompleted processes, the nomadic and the growing. They always create ‘provisional places’. Movement and development have become a theme in itself in their oeuvre. They therefore never use fixed arrangements, constellations or connections between the various aspects of their artistic work. Each project is set up in a different manner, sometimes completed with earlier material.

The use of material and colour indicates a major appreciation of the marginal, the ‘intermediate zones’ usually found in the unexpected aspect of everyday life processes, bordering on the banal and on disappearance. They do not use flashy and modern colours or materials. The artists work with various media ranging from images and photographs to texts, slides and projects conjured up on the spot.

These artists often work in deserted, peripheral grounds with various primitive, unaffected and crude herbs or plants, where nomadic, urban, order and disorder merge in an interweaved artistic and poetic universe.

A major intervention in their oeuvre was that for Documenta X (1997). Here Lois Weinberger planted his so-called ‘Ruderal’ (referring to the German word for weeds), vegetation originating from certain European countries – such as the Warsaw Pact countries – that were dealing with problems such as migration, urbanisation and ecology at the time, in several discarded train tracks near Kassel Main Station. The free, wild character of the herbs and other plants used, formed a type of natural ‘guerrillas’, like natural-symbolic threats to every form of power.

Such politically slanted metaphors are often found in the work of the Weinbergers, and critical connotations vis-à-vis social phenomena are never far off. Their creations often fit in with – or reflect – current issues such as urbanisation, migration and globalisation. On the other hand, their artistic ‘gardens’ remain open spaces and systems, detached from dogmatic definitions and set interpretations. They remain installations where the viewer can wander freely as well as socio-critical works of art.

The above-mentioned participation in Documenta X was a major step in the artistic career of the Weinbergers. They were (finally) recognised as major West-European contemporary artists who started an artistic debate on this theme at a time when American Land-Art from the sixties, Arte Povera from the seventies and Joseph Beuys’ German social ‘nature’ art were coming to an end. The difference between these movements and the work of the Weinbergers is also crucial: while Land-Art focussed on fleeting interventions in wild nature, the Weinbergers create their art with the outcasts of nature, namely weeds.

Although they have realised many projects in the open air, Lois and Franziska Weinberger also work indoors, for example, with their ‘movable gardens’. Here plastic bags or metal containers are filled with earth of various deserted areas, planted with typical ‘Ruderal’ seeds, mixed with local plants. In these installations the artists let nature take its course, while simultaneously leaving their mark through their ‘minimalist’ and rather artificial styling, in both a ‘civilised’ environment and in nature itself.

While the Weinbergers have participated in various open-air ‘situ projects’ in Belgium, this is the first time such an overview of the work of these ‘artists-gardeners’ is shown.