Schwitters in the garden

Abstract

The Portuguese artist Tiago Madaleno asked me to write this essay on the subject of his most recent site-specific project, which stems from the topic of gardens as related to some idiosyncratic details of the life of the artist Kurt Schwitters. In particular, the garden at Cylinders Farm belonging to landscape designer Harry Pierce whom Kurt Schwitters befriended during the last years of his life, and where Schwitters transformed a shed into his last project, the Merzbarn. Madaleno’s exhibition titled A Garden at Night (Um Jardim à Noite), playfully develops its visual and audio core in an immersive atmosphere of light and dark. The exhibition has four spatial moments: Wild Flowers, Still, the eye gazed and gazed…, Red Shoes and Silhouette of a Stranger deriving from the Schwitters/Pierce’s nexus.