Lemusich's Garden

According to the account of an ancient author, one day - completely shielded from his sensory perceptions - he thought about existence. In this state, his thinking soared to great heights.

Such a one-sided turning away from sensory perceptions found its compensation in a central branch of hermeticism - alchemy. It deals with the transformation of substances, both in the physical and spiritual sense, and searches for the hidden connection between the material and immaterial world.

In the 36-part series Lemusich's Garden, Bernd Weingart reflects on spiritual worlds that elude rational systems and well-worn traditions of thought. At the centre of his work is an interest in hermetic philosophical traditions that have been formulated over the centuries as counter-designs to the dogmatic order of established power structures. Their approach to reality was exclusive, their representatives often outsiders - observed, criticised and often banned.

The aphoristic essence of ›Omnes Colores‹ symbolises the ›appearance of all qualities‹ of a complete reality in the alchemists' successful ›opus‹. This idea refers to the pursuit of a comprehensive perception of the world and one's own self. In Lemusich's Garden, Weingart reinterprets this idea and links it to Friedrich Schiller's concept of ›Homo ludens‹, the playing man - that creative moment in which man finds himself through play. Weingart understands this play as an aesthetic-philosophical glass bead game in which a lively wholeness of all external and internal experiences of feeling, memory, knowledge and intuition are transparently superimposed and condensed into a new reality.

However, Lemusich's garden is not only a space for philosophical reflection, but also a field for open questions. In the works presented here, questions of quantum physics, philosophy and religion are interwoven with ambiguous symbols and cultural-historical myths about the origin of the cosmos. The works reflect the preoccupation with the frontiers of knowledge - with questions that remain unresolved despite all scientific progress and whose metaphysical dimension transcends the boundaries of the rational.

Despite the challenging themes, this ›Ludus Omnium Colorum‹ is not a strict, conceptual treatise. Rather, it is the result of a free, associative process: fragment by fragment - from moments of everyday coincidence, childhood memories, intuitive impulses and a multitude of unsystematic suggestions from the history of art and literature. Visual quotations, for example from Johann Wilhelm Baur's illustrations to Ovid's ›Metamorphoses‹ or from Matthäus Merian the Elder's works on the ›Alchemica illustrata‹, serve Weingart as reference figures.

This amalgam of quotations, collaged fragments of reality and randomly created material structures unfolds into an intellectual play of figures in which the twelve triptychs – conceived as a closed circle – seem to follow a quest to stage themselves in ever new variations in constant transformation. Here, visual worlds unfold in a state of permanent change: motifs shift, reappear altered or alienated. In this visual continuum, each triptych stands on its own, yet is also part of a larger context.

This rhythmic movement, this interplay of variation and recurrence, reflects a deeper idea: the notion that knowledge does not lie in the static possession of truth, but rather in the constant search for it. Thus, “Lemusich’s Garden” presents levels of perception in images that become transparent between memory and imagination, science and myth, play and structure – an imaginary garden in which meaning cannot be forced, but emerges again and again in dazzling overlays.

- Max von Gleichen