"Things follow a natural rhythm, they grow and mature. You have to graft and to water. They mature in my head. Paintings have to emit sparks like the stones with which the farmers in the Pyrenees use to light their pipes." (J. Miro)

"Ogrodoy" is the title of this installation as well as the patent name for the painting technique of the artist. The Polish word "ogrody" means garden or gardens, and the artist has kept this term because of its multifaceted meanings, and its sound somehow corresponds to the painting process.

The artistic installation "Ogrody" represents the cycle of growing and passing away, the ever changing cyclical development of all processes of life. Within the "Ogrody" installation water, paintings, sounds and dance are merging into a comprehensive work of art. The artist developed this project in close cooperation with the composer Ecki Stieg and the dancer and choreagraph Ralf Jaroschinski.

Description of the installation:
16 smaller canvasses are fixed to a large clay wall (2,50 x 12 x 0,8 m) which is put up diagonally across the hall. These paintings (fixed at a distance of 5 cm from the wall) are no static pictures in the general sense, but they are in a state of continuous change. As part of a cyclical process the paintings are periodically watered with ground water by a system of pipes which is installed behind them (Gardena Micro Drip). Due to an exactly calculated amount of water the paintings change according to the respective duration of the process of humidification and subsequent drying. The colour effects are changing; the figurations (e.g. plants) on the canvasses evaporate and reappear etc. They become part of an endless cycle…

The paintings:
Ink on canvas - this the sober description of the technique developed by the artist. The colour effect of his works is the mysterious outcome of an alchemistic artistic process: streams of colour, atomized floods of colour, drifting particles driven by forces of gravitation open up a space in which shadowy, unreal figurations appear.

This "Ogrody" installation puts the development and process of the artist's painting into the focus. The process of maturing of a painting is exhibited in an artistic space, and this maturing is somehow left to the dynamics of the materials.

The withdrawal of the artist from his paintin finds expression in the cyclical processes of the "Ogrody" installation. The paintings reveal an interior system. They represent a total space of colour, sound and movement.

"The light is there, we are surrounded by colours, but if we did not carry light and colours in our own eyes, we would not even be able to perceive them outside of uns." (J.W. von Goethe)

Carsten Ahrens, Hannover 1993, Kestner Gesellschaft