10 Paintings: Mycel 1 - 10, 2021, Acryl & Oil on bed linnen or towells

Silke Bachmann, Munich

"My work on the current project includes painting and drawing. For the various paintings, Penelope Richardson gave me old discarded fabrics to use as a painting ground. They are old linen bedding and partly tattered towels. I like the idea that the fabrics, my base, are damaged and have already "experienced" a lot. Also, these materials are something domestic, feminine. The fact that the things or figures are not fully functional runs through my work. I show different sized paintings that spread out like mycelium on the wall. One large work is inspired by a photograph I took at a lake in Daugavpils. The other paintings show enlarged mould spores and various motifs that inspired me during the artist in residence. Furthermore, I show drawings on paper that I made myself. For this, I collected plant parts during the week in Latvia. The interest in fungi of all kinds feeds on our collective thoughts about the model of nature with the communicatively interwoven fungal mycelium for a better networking of women artists. 

I was born in Leipzig and grew up in Berlin, where I completed 5 years of art studies with a master student certificate. Since 10 years I live in Munich and be a member of the BBK and the GEDOK Munich. I exhibit regularly, have been working for several years with various artists* in cooperations and have received an international scholarship in 2016. In 2021 I received the art award of the city of Aichach. For three years now I have been running my studio for painting and drawing in a light-flooded former greenhouse in the Botanikum in Munich".

"Safe space" drawings on wall, 2022

Ingrīda Pičukāne, Riga

My psychotherapist once asked me to imagine a safe space, but I could not. Every space feels like a trap from which you cannot escape, and this feeling is linked to the experience of domestic violence. When I thought about it, I realised that my safe space was the forest. The forest is an open space where I can escape. In the forest I can escape and hide - nature is my refuge and my place of strength. 
Recently I was invited to participate in the Mycelia project and during this time the issue of safe spaces came up for me because I had very noisy neighbours who made it impossible for me to work or even sleep in peace at home. This led to the image of finding a peaceful place in flowers and clouds. I was also inspired by the memes with photos of bees sleeping in flowers that circulate on the internet.
Safe Place is a three-part collaboration with artist Silke Bachmann. One part is the comic "Fusionem Paradisum", created for the comic magazine "sh!". in 2019 and is dedicated to merging with nature. In creating the comics, I am influenced by the continuous narrative method of medieval art, where a story is told in a single work, characters appear several times and the comic is not divided into panels, creating a sense of continuity and panoramic possibilities. In this comic I am also influenced by the work of the naïve Henri Rousseau.
The second and third parts of the work are created in collaboration with Silke: large-scale painting and mixed media drawings. The large-scale painting will also feature reclining figures, but they will be in mushrooms. This image came to my mind during one of my many walks in the forest. Mushroom heads often have an indentation that is a perfect place to sleep. I imagined huge mushrooms big enough for a person to sleep in. The work will be created on site at the Mark Rothko Art Centre with the participation of artist Silke Bachmann.

Ingrīda Pičukāne (1978, Latvia) is an artist, illustrator, and a teacher in animation and comics at the Riga Art and media school. She graduated from the Art Academy of Latvia, Estonian Academy of Arts and Jānis Rozentāls Art High School. She works in different techniques: drawing, comics, video, animation, installations, murals and live performance. Pičukāne has participated in several editions of the contemporary art festival “Survival Kit”, in many international comics exhibitions and illustrated children's books published by "Liels un mazs". Lately Pičukāne has been mostly interested in feminist art, drawing comics with female characters, making large scale paintings, and has published a feminist zine “Samanta”.

The enclosed garden, 2022 (part Karin Fröhlich | the surrounding: 12 guardians) 

Karin Fröhlich, Berlin

Our first collaborative work: the installation "The Rise of the Golden Age", 2020, was born in a cold and icy laboratory situation where cosmic cells were being examined. More and more we went into a serious and appreciative artistic exchange. Word by word, conversation by conversation there appeared even more common ground and sense to further work together on finding an image to realize the utopian idea of a Golden Age in our 21th century. An image of something which has been a dream since ancient times and still is a dream for ourselves.

The Golden Age is a dream of a time where people will live a balance between man and women, between generations and races, dancing, loving, picking flowers, being surrounded by beautiful nature, a garden of joy. So we developed an enclosed garden surrounded by 12 guardians guised in spirals. The spiral sign maps the idea of the whole installation - to find a way to approach the centre. But the garden is still closed. Society is not ready to go inside.

The flattering spirals also symbolize the forest, the journey to the Golden Age has to pass through. Everyone knows the sensation when walking through a birch or aspen grove, and how everything vibrates. There is an ancient folk song in Latvia "Caur sidraba birzi gāju/Ne zariņa nenolauzu/Būt zariņu nolauzuse/Tad staigātu sidrabota". This little song is about sacred growth and life in purity, humbleness and peace.

From a distance this song can be heard and a light can be seen, an energy that calls and awakens longing and yet is not attainable. The guards deny access. It is still before dawn. The body of light – in the center – is still growing and when the Golden Age finally arises it will blossom and in the bright light the gates will open.

Karin Fröhlich and Gundega Evelone, January 2022

Karin Fröhlich is a paintress. She studied her subject at Berlin Academy (now: University) of Arts from 1979 to 1985 guided by Prof. Bernd Koberling and Prof. Kuno Gonschior graduating as a master student. Her one year’s stay as a young artist in Japan remains still to be an inner fountain of subtle and sensitive inspiration. She is member of the BBK (association of artists) Bavaria, spokeswoman of its working group concerned with aesthetic education (AG Kulturelle Bildung) and member of the GEDOK Berlin (female artists’ association). In 2006 she founded the experimental painting school „das kleine atelier“ for children and since 2010 she has been designing national and international children’s art projects that combine visual arts, dance and literature. Her projects have received multiple fundings from the Berlin Project Funds for Cultural Education and the capital of Bavaria.

The enclosed garden, 2022 (part Gundega Evelone), various plastics, LED, paraffin, paper, sound

Gundega Evelone, Riga

I'm completely acknowledging my privileged  position working as an artist. I have the possibility to transform reality and create never-existing  events, situations, shapes and forms in physical matter. I absorb various irritants and ideas and merge them into new substances. I enjoy this process, and especially like to work with tangible forms, because this is the most profound way to feel how abstractions materialize. I'm trying to blend this with the time dimension, but this is quite a complicated task.  I have interests in the widest topics, starting with politics  and ending with landscape, which I can create using  any tools and expressions.

In project "Mycelia" I am attracted by the possibility to interlace my creative universe with other artists' ideas space - so we can make the result twice unpredictable. Together with artist Karin Fröhlich we create the utopia "Enclosed Garden", where everybody wants to enter. Silver garden without questions and answers.

Gundega Evelone (1988) is a multidisciplinary artist. Although she holds an MA in Sculpture from the Art Academy of Latvia, her practice spans various mediums that are called upon as required in order to create an ever more encompassing staged version of reality that strives to wholly involve and influence the viewer. Currently the artist is moving in two distinctly opposed directions – she explores the human element in different social and historical situations while working with such fundamental concepts as ‘space’, ‘matter’ and ‘existence – nonexistence’, trying to find connections in her work between the real, tangible world and each individual’s subjective perception.

"Under the surface", ground installation 3 x 3 m, 2021 (Detail)

Patricia Lincke, Munich

The work "Under the surface" by Patricia Lincke, which was created at the same time as the performance in the lake,

visualises the feeling of physical unity between two people surrounded by gurgling wave sounds and quotes the performance "Togetherness".

This floor work of fragmented female body parts is visually reassembled by the undulating silicone drawings. The soulful concordance felt in the performance is expressed by a figure with two heads and is also a reference to Janus, the double-headed Roman god for beginnings and endings. Acoustically, both are on a quest: a sonar sound explores the space for its respective counterpart. The green lake landscape of Latvia flows translucently through the coloured acrylic elements into the blue mountain lakes of Bavaria. The artistic partnership is composed of photographic individual parts; as a mosaic, the overall picture remains rather vague but atmospheric.

The "Surface" shows landscape impressions during the residency, such as grasses in the wind, a leaf scar, a sunbeam and a water wave, are frozen as silicone drawings on coloured acrylic panels and yet in motion as soon as the breeze of the passing viewer sets this installation vibrating.

Patricia Lincke attended the Merz Academy Stuttgart and graduated as graphic designer at the Johannes-Gutenberg School in Stuttgart. Since 2001 she has been engaged in a conceptual examination of German sensibilities and way of life. Exhibitions since 2008 in Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany and Italy.

Her works deal with themes of drawing and dissolving boundaries, with the relationship between the familiar and the uncanny, between inside and outside, between the hidden and the presented. The ambivalence of her feelings is reflected in the formally reduced works.

"Togetherness“, fabric shirts, gauze. Videostill performance 2021

Laura Feldberga, Riga

The work “Togetherness” was created thinking about the theme of common space and common experience. Space created by people - emotions, thoughts, contradictions and mutual understanding. The invisible but powerful reality that governs relationships between people. The work "Togetherness” consists of installation and a performance video. Two people can put on the fabric and literary be together in the same space. What distance do they chose? What shapes and movements do they create? Do they dance? Do they start playing? How do they feel in this space? 

The original version of the work - an object with shirts and a gauze frame – was created during in the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. The idea was to bring the shirts to life in a joint performance by Laura Feldberg and Patricia Lincke at the Mycelia exhibition in Munich. The idea of ​​a joint performance could only be realized in the summer of 2021 at a residence at the Mark Rothko Art Center. The work "Togetherness" is now supplemented with a video of the joint performance. 

Laura Feldberga was born in 1975 in Riga, Latvia. In 2000, she obtained a master's degree in the Graphics Department of the Latvian Academy of Arts. Laura Feldberg's creative work is diverse and includes installation, environmental objects, painting, graphics and performance. In 2011, she joined the performance group IDEAGNOSIS, which creates interdisciplinary performances using elements of Butoh dance, physical theatre and visual arts. Her installations and objects are often performance artifacts or can be transformed into performance tools. Laura Feldberga works at the Latvian Performance Art Centre as an artist and a performance art teacher.

Wall works 250 cm x 300 cm, Sculpture is dimensions variable 

Penelope Richardson, Munich

‘Wishing on the wind’ is a sculptural installation comprised of wood, metal and clay  alongside two large scale photographic wall works. The photographs are of a temporary drawing located in the forest where stems and vines have been wrapped in red fabric. The sculpture is inspired by female stories,  natural textures and forms. 

This work is created in direct response to an artist residency in summer 2021 at the Mark Rothko Art Centre with the Mycelia artists. In Daugavpils, I was mesmerized by the colours and textures - dark granite, birchwood, metal, soft bleached ochres and greens in and around the fort. I aim to create a work which speaks to local audiences through referencing these textures, colours and forms while also speaking about a broader experience of history. 

Sometimes people’s experience can be very local but at the same time part of the big changes in history. Here I was thinking about women sharing stories,  passing on traditions, recipes, making, kneading, and being the invisible glue and oil keeping everything going. 

The form of the sculptural installation is inspired by an old abacus I found at the flea market at the fort. It’s was used by everyone up into the late 1980’s to count and addition in shops, schools and workplaces. It was always haptic and made sounds as the beads were moved backwards and forwards on metal rods.

In my installation I have molded the inside of my hand many times in clay to get an imprint of the lifeline. These little objects look like bones or something archeological. They are mounted on rods and I invite people to interact with them, touch them, slide them, spin them and clink them to make sounds. 

Penelope Richardson is a conceptual artist who uses drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and photography. Her themes include balance and fragility, environment, cultural and historical legacies, (de)colonialism, magic and the uncanny, and communication. Richardson's projects usually begin with an idea followed by her emotional, intellectual and material response to it. Often the spectator is a key part of the work as active participants in bringing the work alive. She likes to engage the viewer in the creative process in some way without dictating how a work should be read or conceived. 

Richardson studied Fine Arts in Sydney at the National Art School and Sydney College Arts, Sydney University. She did post-graduate studies at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia and completed her Master of Fine Art at RMIT in Melbourne. Since 2008 she lives and works in Munich, Germany. She is a member of the BBK, GEDOK Munich and VG-Bild.

Sandra Strēle, Riga

During Soviet times, plants in office buildings used to be exotic (cactuses, palms, rubberwood etc.). Why? Is it somehow connected to the “exoticity” the buildings expressed often creating a controversial reaction, a monstrosity?

In her painting series and in an artist book Sandra tries to answer these questions by depicting the soviet buildings in different real and fictional exhibition spaces overgrown with the plants that usually were used to decorate their interiors. The idea to put these buildings in different exhibition halls actualizes the problem of women artists (and not only – also all artist in common) to organize big solo exhibitions. And this problem grows even bigger when a woman – artist gets older. Nowadays it is still some kind of an exoticity to be a well-known middle-aged woman – artist whose work gets exhibited in big and powerful exhibition spaces.

The series of eight paintings is supplemented with an artist book that consists of short stories related to each of the paintings. The book and the paintings offer the viewer to rethink the role of a woman and, especially, woman – artist in the contemporary world. What does artistic success mean and what does it mean to be an artistically successful (woman) artist?

In her creative work, Sandra creates large-scale installations based on painting – a series of paintings that, in chronological order, advance from one story to another. She focuses on creating and interpreting secluded, alienated, sometimes lonely places, their architecture, and fictional everyday scenes, offering the viewer the role of an observer.

Sandra Strēle graduated in 2016 from the Art Academy of Latvia. She has received the visual arts scholarship of the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation in 2012, the Brederlo von Sengbusch Art Prize in 2014, the SEB Banka scholarship in painting in 2016, prestigious grant from Elizabeth Greenschields foundation in Canada and Young Painter Prize in 2019. Sandra Strēle has held a number of solo exhibitions, participated in group exhibitions and artist residences in Latvia and abroad.

Deep at the bottom of the lake, the hidden smells (working title)

Sabine Schlunk, Munich

The work is a site-specific installation on the floor, below the vaulted ceiling of the museum. The sapropel – an almost black, earthy material found at the bottom of lakes – covers almost the entire floor. There are also some reflective surfaces, marshy areas, and various mounds. Paintings by Guna Millersone hang above the work, representing a group of people who might be approaching the viewer. The reflections of the paintings, as if in a lake, seem to be unimaginable things lurking on the dark ground. Some clarifying elements appear on the hills. The scenario is accompanied by sounds of nature and footsteps in the marsh. 

The viewer could imagine going on an imaginary journey with the people in the paintings, who would accompany them to different places and different eras – from prehistoric times to the Middle Ages, to the time of the Tsars, to the times of the World Wars, to the Soviet Union to now. Both Baltic and German places appear. But then thoughts escape far away to other continents, such as to the remains of Native American mounds. 

Whatever has happened as a result of humanity and to humans personally and culturally, whatever happy or traumatizing situations our ancestors have experienced, it is the earth, the stones, and the waters that have survived and are the witnesses. These traces are stored as memories at the bottoms of seas, rivers and lakes – like the sapropel and the bog. From these soils, new beings are born. On Lake Talsi there is the black-throated loon and on the lakeshore, the wolf. In the woods there are mushrooms, whose underground mycelium network covers a wide area across which they exchange knowledge. In the forest of beech trees in central Germany there are fossilized shells and fossils of prehistoric marine animals from 200 million years ago, before humans existed.

In the black currants growing in Latvian vegetable gardens, we sense return, a warm coming home, like in the days of Sabine Schlunk’s grandmother, Emmy Schlunk. 

Sabine Schlunk spent her childhood in the countryside, often in the wild nature on the border of East Germany to West Germany. She still has her studio and retreat there. She lived in Berlin for eleven years, in the southern states of the USA for seven years, and now in Munich. She exhibits internationally, in countries such as the USA, Canada, Spain, Korea, Germany, Puerto Rico and now Latvia.

For four years in Nashville, Tennessee USA, Ms. Schlunk founded and curated in the art center gallery F. - Contemporary Art and Outsider Art. She was also an art lecturer at nearby Belmont University and Tennessee State University. Her work with the Scarritt Bennett Center's ethnological collection (also in Nashville) continues to inspire her artistic work. She has extensive experience with perfomance art and theater, and is involved professionally with art and psychiatry.

She received a Master Equivalent from the Berlin University of the Arts in 2003 and a Diplom from the Schneeberg Faculty of Applied Arts in 1994. 

Glezna, oil on canvas, 120×140 cm, 2021-22

Guna Millersone, Riga

I am glad to announce the continuation of mycelia and our friendship, however strictly counting on the global situation.

Mycelium is believed to be eternal, and its self-preservation instincts are mysterious. It is also said to be incredibly self-communicative. Besides, its form of existence is well-timed: it allows our modern economy to produce multitudes of sorts of mushrooms selling them as seeds conveniently purchasable at a store. It is similar to connections between art and people. On the one hand, the art might appear to be questionable and frightening, while on the other hand, when the right moment comes, it may flourish and bring joy to its creators and viewers. This time the encounter of German and Latvian artists at Mark Rotko's Center in Daugavpils had a previously well-established grounding for work. Thus leading to the creation of impressive art mycelia with all the essential components.

My and Sabine's Schlunk mutual piece of art is deeply-rooted in soil and is devoted to its smells and fragrances, lights, colours, and pigments. With this, we also commemorate the mutual history of our nations. We are thinking  about this.

Guna Millersone is born in Dundaga, Latvia. Studied at the J. Rozentāls Riga Art High School, graduated from the Pedagogy Department of the Art Academy of Latvia . Since 1983 she has been curator of exhibitions and projects at the Talsi Regional Museum, chief specialist in art issues. She has participated in exhibitions since 1990 and has held 20 solo exhibitions.  She actively participated in the founding of the well-known Talsi Bush Art Group, organises group exhibitions in Latvia and abroad. Her works have been exhibited in France, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Estonia, Germany, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Belgium, Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia, Italy, Finland, Belarus.  She is the winner of the Swedbank Prize "Painting of the Year" (2016 ), the Municipality of Talsi Ž. Sūniņš Prize in Visual Arts ( 2005, 2015 ). She has participated in plein-air painters' workshops in Latvia and abroad. She has compiled numerous art catalogues and writes about art in the Latvian press. Member of the Artists' Union of Latvia (1992).

"Mycelia" 2020, oil on canvas 160 x 200 cm; Drawings "Mycelia I - III", ink on paper und " Fruchtkörper I - III" 2020, ink on paper,  diameter 18 cm.

Silke Bachmann, Munich

"Ieva and I have thought about focusing on the symbolic representation of a female network, because we find both hands fascinating and appreciate their meaning, for example when you hold hands. For both of us this symbolizes cohesion among women, which could be improved. Our common theme in Mycelia is the visible connection by touching the hands in the interaction of the hidden connection through the fungal plexus (mycelium).

My work is divided into two parts: On the one hand I show a classical oil painting on stretcher frame. The title of the work is "Mycelia" from 2020, which shows two hands surrounded by a net-like structure and mushrooms. On the left my hand is shown, on the right Ieva's actually injured hand, from whose wound fungal fruiting bodies grow.

The mycelium, the net-like structures in the picture, flow towards an oval, in which they condense and dive into the hidden. The oval could also be a mirror, both because of its form and because of the reflecting underground, which produces the oil paint applied shiny at this point. This mirror metaphor was not intended, but I find it very appropriate to reflect my own position in my existing network.

In addition, I show drawings made during the painting process on self-made paper in organic form. The drawings reflect the process in which I am always searching while painting.

I was born in Leipzig and grew up in Berlin, where I completed 5 years of art studies with a master student certificate. Since 8 years I live in Munich and be a member of the BBK and the GEDOK. I exhibit regularly, have been working for several years with various artists* in cooperations and have received an international scholarship in 2016. For one year now I have been running my studio for painting and drawing in a light-flooded former greenhouse in the Botanikum in Munich".

Touch, Digital print,100×150 cm AND „Network/ Fungusfilm“ 80x 35mm slides, 2020

Ieva Balode, Riga

What is the idea of your work?

Whilst the capitalist driven world is expecting highest performance of our work load and products, which is mostly achieved by competition as a driving force of economics and power, there are also other means of coexistence which can be found in a nature. Mycelia as a network of fungi bacteria which is responsible of nurturing and connecting plants and trees through the soil can be used as an analogy of the way human world can support each other and in particular, female world which historically has been exposed to many injustices and male empowerment. Instead of fighting for their power and competing with another women, we can resist by cooperation and mutual support as sister to sister gives hand to each other to reach further together.

What can viewers see?

The viewer sees a black and white photograph where two hands are depicted holding each other and reaching for mutual support. On a side of an image is a projection of 80 35mm analog film slides which depicts process of fungus growing on the actual film. Part of the slides shows a process of fungus growing on a film surface and the other slides are the actual film where fungus was growing on.

Ieva Balode (born in 1987, Riga, Latvia) is an artist and film curator working with analog image. She participates in international exhibitions and festivals presenting her work both in installation, as well as cinema and performance situations. As a curator she is a founding member of the Baltic Analog Lab – artists collective providing a space and platform for analog film production, research and education. She is also a director of the experimental film festival Process happening in Riga since 2017.

Installation “The rise of the Golden Age - Prologue“, 2020 (Detail: mycelia blooming blue and green - 9 colored studies by Karin Fröhlich)

Karin Fröhlich, Berlin

The Installation “The rise of the Golden Age“, a feminist science-art laboratory consist of seven different art pieces whom one could see beneath, on and behind a table with two chairs.

Our exchange and collaboration started with the piece - mycelia first flush (three Leporellos Karin Fröhlich / four clear boxes with sculptures Gundega Evelone). The next step had been the mysteriously artistically real story (print in transparent film) from Gundega Evelone. This story inspired - arctic mycelia - the first artist book and also arctic mycelia study - the second artist book, both by Karin Fröhlich and led to the sculptur The Incubator by Gundega Evelone. In this sculpture one could find 13 pieces of mycelia blooming in red, pink and orange - round painted canvas. Finally - mycelia encyclopedia - the third artist book and - mycelia blooming in blue and green - (nine colored studies) completed the feminist science-art lab.

Karin Fröhlich is a paintress. She studied her subject at Berlin Academy (now: University) of Arts from 1979 to 1985 guided by Prof. Bernd Koberling and Prof. Kuno Gonschior graduating as a master student. Her one year’s stay as a young artist in Japan remains still to be an inner fountain of subtle and sensitive inspiration. She is member of the BBK (association of artists) Bavaria, spokeswoman of its working group concerned with aesthetic education (AG Kulturelle Bildung) and member of the GEDOK Berlin (female artists’ association). In 2006 she founded the experimental painting school „das kleine atelier“ for children and since 2010 she has been designing national and international children’s art projects that combine visual arts, dance and literature. Her projects have received multiple fundings from the Berlin Project Funds for Cultural Education and the capital of Bavaria.

„The Rise of Golden Age“, Installation, 2020, (Detail: The Incubator - sculpture by Gundega Evelone) 

Gundega Evelone, Riga

The Installation „The Rise of Golden Age“ anticipates a likely to happen scientific event: the finding of cosmic ova. The work of art deals with a starting phase of gigantic changes in society caused by the discovery of feminine ova which are able to self-organize and create new life.
 Oogenesis, i.e. the formation and maturation of an egg, happens in the frigid and masculine environment of a laboratory without the presence of male individuals. The physical parts of our work of art show the contrast between the cold setting and the creative and lively female counterpart. Our work of art is concerned with the general topic of the “Mycelia“-exhibition by focussing feministic themes and a future ecosystem that explores and incubates a passage into a world of art overcoming misconceptions of male and female.

Gundega Evelone (1988) is a multidisciplinary artist. Although she holds an MA in Sculpture from the Art Academy of Latvia, her practice spans various mediums that are called upon as required in order to create an ever more encompassing staged version of reality that strives to wholly involve and influence the viewer. Currently the artist is moving in two distinctly opposed directions – she explores the human element in different social and historical situations while working with such fundamental concepts as ‘space’, ‘matter’ and ‘existence – nonexistence’, trying to find connections in her work between the real, tangible world and each individual’s subjective perception.

Looking for mushrooms, ca 90 x 90 cm, silicone on inkjet print, 2020

Patricia Lincke, Munich

The networking of the mycelia takes place in secret. Their network is fragile and, in relation to their own size, only sometimes brings to light a fruiting body, a fungus. The artistic interaction at a spatial distance, without seeing each other, was more like a blind date and was a mutual palpation with the help of digital possibilities and an intuitively supported weaving of artistic works. But in order to meet and recognize each other, the sight of the other is necessary.

This is why the faces of Laura Feldberga and Patricia Lincke are veiled under a thread-like veil of whitish silicone, making it difficult to recognize them clearly the more oblique the angle of vision falls on the works. Thus the nebulous feeling that accompanied the artistic cooperation can be guessed at. However, in the exact opposite, the essential features of the face are revealed to the viewer: Both portraits hang opposite each other in the exhibition and the artists finally see each other in this way. The artificial mycelia applied to large prints condense into a fabric that gives the work haptic stability on the one hand and suggests optical dissolution on the other. Due to the threads, the edges of the picture seem to be frayed or in a state of continuation. Neon colour pigments, applied to the back, give the faces a luminous colour fringing around. This optimistic impression can also be found in the title of both works and refers to the possible success of a working group when networking „bears fruit“.

Patricia Lincke attended the Merz Akademie Stuttgart and graduated as graphic designer at the Johannes-Gutenberg School in Stuttgart. Since 2001 she has been engaged in a conceptual examination of German sensibilities and way of life. Exhibitions since 2008 in Austria, Bulgaria, Germany and Italy.
Her works deal with themes of drawing and dissolving boundaries, with the relationship between the familiar and the uncanny, between inside and outside, between the hidden and the presented. The ambivalence of her feelings is reflected in the formally reduced works.

Laura Feldberga, „Togetherness“, fabric shirts, gauze. Installation. 2020

Laura Feldberga, Riga

What is the idea of your work? 

The work “Togetherness” reflects on the subject of collective awareness and collective space. The space created by human beings – emotions, thoughts, conflicts and mutual understanding. The invisible yet powerful reality that defines the relationships between people. The work “Togetherness” is both an installation and a performance piece. It is wearable. Two people can put on the fabric and literary be together in the same space. What is the distance they are keeping? What shapes and moves do they create? Do they dance together? Do they play? Do they start to defend their privacy? How do they feel in this space?
 There are two objects for the Mycelia exhibition. Two bags of gauze containing 2 pairs of shirts. The dimensions of installation are variable.

What can viewers see? 

They can see two pairs of collar shirts covered with light, transparent fabric hanging from the ciling. The impression might be that there are two beings in a tent-like space. I also have to think that viewers will see the work indirectly – via social media and video. So, the work will not be tangible. In a way they will see the story of the exhibition including my installation.

How does it relate to the exhibition?  

The subject regarding the themes of Mycelia project is: Interconnectedness (The individual intelligence meets the power of the collective: What strategies emerge when we work together?). I wanted to create an actual opportunity to experience interconnectedness. My project partner artist Patricia Lincke and I created an invisible net of connection by exchanging our emails. I was hoping to wear the installation with Patricia, and make the connection visible. It turned out to be different from what I expected. Instead I sent my work to the exhibition, ant the link between me and the other artists remained invisible.

Laura Feldberga was born in 1975 in Riga, Latvia. In 2000, she received her Master’s degree from the Printmaking Department of the Art Academy of Latvia. Since 1995 she has participated in numerous group exhibitions, symposiums, and creative workshops. Her works have been exhibited in Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus, Finland, Japan, Sweden, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the USA, Belgium, Iceland, Turkey and Russia. Feldberga’s creative works are very diverse and include installation, site-specific objects, painting, printmaking and performance. In 2011 she joined the performance group IDEAGNOSIS that produces interdisciplinary performances using elements of Butoh dance, physical theater and visual arts. Her installations and objects often are performances artifacts or can be transformed into performance tools.

Laura Feldberga pays special attention to the emotional component of her artwork and works with themes like time, place, emotional experience, memories, imagination, self-research and response to the surrounding reality. Most of her projects are site-specific and directly inspired by the space, conditions and emotional atmosphere of the places where her work is created.

„German Tropical: What would this room be without plants?“, painting installation and artists book made for MYCELIA, 2020.

Penelope Richardson, Munich

What is the idea of your work?

„These works explore the residues of a political system still found in our everyday lives in Munich. I shine a light on an ecosystems of power by drawing the architectual interiors of previous National Socialist buildings which have now been repurposed (detoxified) as cultural institutions. By highlighting the exotic plants in these environments I wondered what invisible network they have. Can we transpose the word ‚plant’ for ‚women’? The plants somehow represent an unseen interconnectedness across epochs. Silent witnesses. They are living residue and an exotic cliche in their environments.“

What can viewers see?

„In the film viewers can see the exhibition installation called „Tropical Exotic Network Express“ containing eight paintings each by artists Penelope Richardson and by Sandra Strele. Their works are intermingled across the exhibition wall and linked together by a bright green criss-crossing line that weaves behind them. Original live office plants, a long white curtain and a real large ficus plant contain the installation within the gallery space.

Richardson’s paintings, titled „German Tropical: What would this room be without plants?“ are brightly painted interior views of offices and public buildings overlaid with tropical plants. These small scale works are painted in fluorescent acrylic colors on linen. In two of the works she has replaced the tropical plants with Australian plants relating to her native home. To supplement the paintings, the artist also exhbits a 3-colour artists book object printed using a Risograph printer which sits on a shelf within the installation.

How does it relate to the exhibition

In the colloaboration the artists choose the binding element of exotic office plants used in the offices of the National Socialists and by the Communist to begin to explore ideas of residues, networks and to ponder the question of the place of women artists in the political ecosystems of the past and present.

In my artistic practice I respond to the world around me through colour, form and material. My work is multidiscipinary ranging from drawing and painting to performance and installation. I respond to the idea I want to explore in a dynamic way and I work with materials that assist me in getting to the essence of my idea. My work can be earnest, reflective and political or absurd, obtuse and playful. Sometimes the quintessence of the a particular work is disguised within a game or a field of colour as a hook to engage the viewer in a playful two-way dialogue.

Installation “Exotic, is it not?” as a part of the installation “Tropical exotic network express”, 8 paintings on canvas, mixed media, 2020 and an artist book “Exotic, is it not?”

Sandra Strēle, Riga

During Soviet times, plants in office buildings used to be exotic (cactuses, palms, rubberwood etc.). Why? Is it somehow connected to the “exoticity” the buildings expressed often creating a controversial reaction, a monstrosity?

In her painting series and in an artist book Sandra tries to answer these questions by depicting the soviet buildings in different real and fictional exhibition spaces overgrown with the plants that usually were used to decorate their interiors. The idea to put these buildings in different exhibition halls actualizes the problem of women artists (and not only – also all artist in common) to organize big solo exhibitions. And this problem grows even bigger when a woman – artist gets older. Nowadays it is still some kind of an exoticity to be a well-known middle-aged woman – artist whose work gets exhibited in big and powerful exhibition spaces.

The series of eight paintings is supplemented with an artist book that consists of short stories related to each of the paintings. The book and the paintings offer the viewer to rethink the role of a woman and, especially, woman – artist in the contemporary world. What does artistic success mean and what does it mean to be an artistically successful (woman) artist?

In her creative work, Sandra creates large-scale installations based on painting – a series of paintings that, in chronological order, advance from one story to another. She focuses on creating and interpreting secluded, alienated, sometimes lonely places, their architecture, and fictional everyday scenes, offering the viewer the role of an observer.

Sandra Strēle graduated in 2016 from the Art Academy of Latvia. She has received the visual arts scholarship of the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation in 2012, the Brederlo von Sengbusch Art Prize in 2014, the SEB Banka scholarship in painting in 2016, prestigious grant from Elizabeth Greenschields foundation in Canada and Young Painter Prize in 2019. Sandra Strēle has held a number of solo exhibitions, participated in group exhibitions and artist residences in Latvia and abroad.

Smell of the Mysteries
Installation: Moor, Water Light, Sound, Time, 2020

Sabine Schlunk, Munich

With this work I am experimenting with a material from nature. The moor. It refers to the nature in Bavaria and Latvia. There are different layers in moors. The upper layer, also called felt and the deeper one. In this deeper part of the moor there are healing substances. These substances were created many years ago from plants and animals, they have historical traces in them.
In the stories that my art partner Guna Millersone has written me, there are stories of her ancestors, for example as a group of German soldiers who waited in their mother's house for the end of the war, as she says, making music peacefully. In my imagination this is a surprisingly pleasant situation, as are the moor healing treatments I recently received on my injured knee.
The viewers see a circle of dark material on the floor 4 meters in diameter. Around the circle hang five abstract paintings by Guna in a semicircle. Most of the colours are based on those from nature, including dark brown to black peat-like colours. The floor is initially made of moist chocolate-like material, there are water surfaces and green-yellow flashing lights. The sound of hot summer evenings with crickets, birds and of movements in the mire can be heard and there is a subtle smell. The surface reminds of a landscape consisting of ponds, hills, streams, plains. After a few days the very humid surface dries up and bright spots appear where the ground shines through. Later the surface dries out completely and the initially pasty wet consistency changes into dry shrunken platelets or plaques, which become wavy, creased and curved, and change into a completely new landscape.

Same Landscape I-V, oil on canvas, 120×140, 2013-2020

Guna Millersone, Riga

What is the idea of your work?

I have been keeping a close look at the same natural scenery since my childhood; therefore, my intention was to depict the same motive in various seasons and colours, which has caught my eye at a particular moment of time. However, from the outcome of my landscape paintings one can see that it would take too much from me to serve the actual place and time… Nevertheless, the rural landscape is my mycelia that calls me to take a step further into the world of adventures and mysterious explorations.

What does the viewer see in the exhibition?

The viewer may see a traditional manner of painting. The colour is intensively saturated, oftentimes deep and dark. I trust my hand, which creates a powerful stroke of a brush.

How does it relate to the exhibition

I am convinced that the substance of my landscape paintings perfectly aligns with the general idea of the exposition, as well as with Sabine Schlunk’s collaborative work. Sabine’s piece of art, with its touch of natural, mycelia-like textures and fragrances perfectly contributes to the sense of my paintings.

Guna Millersone ist a curator at a museum of a regional scale in Talsi, Latvia where she organizes a variety of art-related exhibitions. In addition to that, she is a member of the town’s very active artist group, that cultivates performances a a takes many artistic forms. Together they take part in art exhibitions nationally and internationally.