»Api étoilé - A Growing Archive« - of the benefits of crops This archive from Gabriela
Oberkofler initiated focuses on agricultural crops. From one continent to another seeds and
field reports are collected with respect to their cultivation. After several months of travel
and research the seeds will be handed over to interested hobby gardeners for the purpose of
growing a year's worth of plants. In the following year they will be displayed as yearlings in
the inner courtyard of the Villa Merkel along with drawings watercolors and videoworks by
Gabriela Oberkofler. The plants constitute an opulent initial kitchen garden of a new type
which as if arising casually offers a contrast to the park which surrounds the Villa Merkel
and with its anthropo-morphic reshaping of nature is designed according to the ideal of
English landscape gardens. After the plants of this kitchen garden have produced new seeds in
turn these will be added to the growing archive by the gardeners participating in the project.
In this way the archive constantly grows and will be continued in an expanded form past the
two-year pilot phase. Experience and knowledge are successively added on highly diverse levels.
Exhibition:Villa Merkel Galerie der Stadt Esslingen 15 5 - 15 8 2021
