The works now on display at the KWS Biotechnikum are not traditional photographs. The artist has chosen to create image compositions using real flowers, which she arranges directly on a scanner. The images captivate with their extraordinary color and spatial depth. Two banners stretching across two floors resemble curtains on a theater stage, where the artist’s imaginary gardens unfold. Fittingly, the exhibition is titled “On Stage” and will be on view until April 15, 2025. Several guided tours are planned, with dates to be announced in due time.
Luzia Simons is considered a pioneer of the scanogram: since the 1990s, she has been creating stunningly beautiful floral arrangements using a special scanner instead of a camera. These illusionistic spatial images are created by draping flowers on the scanner glass, which then scans the surfaces and produces a digital image that can be read and visualized by a computer. Simons processes these highly precise image measurements like a developed photograph. The areas where the flowers touch the scanner glass are rendered with microscopic precision, while areas with no contact remain abstract and blurred.
“The monumental floral compositions impress us, captivate us, and raise the question: is it painted or photographed?” asked Stephan Krings, Head of Global Marketing & Communications at KWS, during the opening. The large-format floral splendor has something paradisiacal about it, making one feel like a small butterfly. “Of course, plants are a bridge to KWS, but it’s also wonderful when artists bring their own methods, like the scanogram here.” After all, research and development always require new ideas.
“Luzia Simons succeeds in an incomparable way in evoking a sense of the unattainable and the immeasurable,” said Dr. Bettina Ruhrberg, Director of the Mönchehaus Museum Goslar. The floral arrangements unfold an immense presence and an almost seductive power in their opulence. However, the overarching theme of the Brazilian-born artist goes far beyond flowers. “In her work, the artist celebrates the beauty of nature, while also addressing its fragility, transience, and the threats posed by human interference.” Simons does not limit herself to depicting dreamlike floral compositions but incorporates current societal issues into her work.
“Her seemingly cheerful and light-hearted works stem from a profound worldview,” Ruhrberg quoted French cultural attaché Chantal Colleu-Dumond. “All her landscapes and inner gardens celebrate both the permanence and fragility of things, but above all, they perform the miracle of preserving each flower and leaf in art, engraving the infinite beauty of the world into our visual imagination.”
The floral banners made of fabric hang in the Biotechnikum like theater curtains. Between them, four cabinet rooms transformed into stage sets present large-format reproductions from the “Weeds” series. Over many years, Luzia Simons collected various leaf shapes from numerous countries and processed them into delicate black-and-white paper works. This series of wall-filling prints reminds us that nature consists not only of beautiful, ephemeral flowers. They serve as a warning that all forms of nature are essential for the survival of humans and animals on our planet. Some of the images are printed on high-quality hemp paper from Hahnemühle FineArt GmbH (Dassel). The restrained tonality of the drawings forms a subtle contrast to the color explosion of the floral still lifes in the exhibition.
In her baroque floral still lifes, Luzia Simons references the special symbolism of tulips. In the 17th century, the flower with cult status was not only a symbol of vanitas but also epitomized booming trade and subsequent economic collapse—triggered by the crash of the Amsterdam tulip market, where it was traded as a speculative object. Although tulips are considered typically Dutch, they originally come from the steppes of Kazakhstan. From there, they reached the court of the Ottoman Empire and became a symbol of Constantinople. For Luzia Simons, the tulip is also a metaphor for migration and cultural transfer. Her own transcultural identity—living between two continents, three languages, and three cultures, and the issues of home and distance—has repeatedly been a theme in her various series of works.
Luzia Simons, born in 1953 in Quixadá (Brazil), studied history until 1981 and fine arts from 1984 to 1986 at the Sorbonne in Paris. Today, she lives and works in Berlin. Her works are exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in renowned galleries, collections, and institutions across Europe, the USA, China, and Brazil. Currently, her works can be seen in the exhibition ROOTED – Female Brazilian Artists at Brainlab in Munich and in the solo exhibition Le Jardin des délices in Paris.
The opening was musically accompanied by musicians from the Mendelssohn Music School in Einbeck: with a solo by violinist Emilia Fioretti and two pieces composed by Günter Tepelmann, performed by string players Amr Zineddin, Gloria Konrad, and Lorenz Waldeck, Günter Tepelmann on classical guitar, clarinetist Jürgen Rech, and Oliver Beck on double bass.