Veit Laurent Kurz
Green Sanctuary (C.O.T.B)

The exhibition Green Sanctuary (C.O.T.B) by Veit Laurent Kurz (born 1985 in Erbach, lives and works in Berlin) is the second chapter in the exhibition series Since…, developed to mark the anniversary of Haus am Waldsee.

While Kurz has predominantly worked with fiction and mythology, in Green Sanctuary (C.O.T.B) he turns to real ecological relationships and actual environments in which differing concepts of nature play out.

C.O.T.B. stands for Circle Of The Bee, an ongoing project developed through the artist’s research platform Die Kette which brings observations of ecology, psychological reflection, and historical enquiry together with the imagined perspective of the bee. The explorations of the project continue in this exhibition by entering into a dialogue with the history of Haus am Waldsee and its natural surroundings.

On the occasion of the institution’s 80th anniversary, Kurz thus turns his attention to its garden, which he understands is both an ecology and a cultural artefact. Drawing on the history of the English landscape garden, he examines how such landscapes are in fact carefully composed cultural constructions, shaped by aesthetic, historical, and ideological conceptions of nature.

The texts and research materials presented on the seven posters function as evidence of a scientific study. These works also propose a speculative shift in perception, inviting reflection on how environments, behaviours, and sensory worlds might appear if the human viewpoint was displaced – this is seen again in how the hybrid, surreal forms of the ceramic water troughs and beehives in the series Bee Fountain bring to mind coral or mould spores.

Funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).
Funded by the Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media).