Claudia Larissa Artz Art for Sale at Auction

b. 1969 -

born 1969 in Bad Nauheim, lives and works in Cologne, Germany

A paradise garden is the so-called Evergreen Garden, the northernmost special garden of the Vorgebirgspark in Cologne, perhaps not exactly, but nevertheless undoubtedly a quiet, tranquil and relaxing place in the middle of the urban transmission. Nevertheless – and with good reason – the Cologne-based artist Claudia Larissa Artz has given her contribution to the "Vorgebirgspark Skulptur 2015" the title "paradeisos". The Greek word goes back to the ancient Persian pairi-da'za, which means "borderline area". It may have come from the Assyrian palace gardens and was used in antiquity for enclosed, designed gardens, some of which were animated with exotic animals. Consequently, the garden in Eden, the home of Adam and Eve, the first human couple mentioned in the first book of Moses, became a "paradise" in the Greek translation.

A "bordered area" is the evergreen garden, partly surrounded by a beech hedge and divided inside by two dense rows of yew trees, to a far higher extent than the other special gardens of the vorgebirgspark. Although Fritz Encke (1861-1931), the garden architect who designed and designed the park as the first modern Volkspark in Cologne, was inspired by the example of English landscape gardens, he allowed himself to use certain recourse to the garden design of the Baroque in the design of the evergreen garden with its four hedge-lined seating niches and the geometric structure of the lawn. A fountain in the central intersection of the paths in the middle of the lowered lawn area could not be missing, where today, however, there is a round bed with reeds. As a place for her artistic contribution Claudia Artz found this part of the park particularly attractive because of the pronounced contrast between natural forms and geometry, as it is particularly vivid in the relationship between the organic growth forms of the lush yews and the four empty, brick and plastered pedestals on which neo-baroque figures of playing putts were once placed.

Claudia Artz is a painter, but she has also trained as an interior designer and also has a strong interest in the garden art of different times and cultures. All these interests come together in an ideal way in their "paradeisos" project

In order to prepare her contribution, the artist has compiled a series of concise quotations from the literature on garden design in different cultural circles. Of particular importance are the analyses of traditional Japanese gardens, in which the rational geometry of the installations, the domination of the right angle, is to be combined with the irregular, natural forms of plants and stones to a higher synthesis, an ideal harmony. As a painter, Claudia Artz is also fascinated by a description that the Mexican architect Luis Barragon, who worked decisively with coloured architectural elements, once had a yellow-painted wall erected so that the shadow of a wildly growing pepper tree could be all the more impressive against her background.

Geometric elements, right angle, colour – these are also the decisive elements of the project that Claudia Artz designed for the "Vorgebirgspark Sculpture". The basic idea is to accentuate the conditions in the evergreen garden by using eight coloured plastic elements and to make them reliveable by the resulting visual axes and colour sounds. These geometrically shaped color bodies of different orientation and size represent a perfect combination of painting and sculpture. These are mainly elongated objects covered all around with jute and painted monochrome with pigments and acrylic binder, which are placed on two brown-glazed cantilevered woods or placed directly on the lawn. The painting on the objects is very open and direct, in close-up the fabric structure of the jute can be clearly seen. The colour palette of the objects includes delicate red and rosé tones, magenta, two yellow values (Hansa and Cypern yellow), olive green, a darker coelin and a very bright, delicate copper blue – all unobtrusive, sensitive colour values that fit into the colour climate prevailing in the evergreen garden either in contrast or by similarity. At selected points, strategically important for the experience of the garden, in the entrance area, between the yews, on two of the sculpture bases and on the lawn, they are placed in such a way that new perspectives, connections, colour relationships and contrasts always arise when walking through the garden. Geometry and natural form, colour and space, park and viewer can thus be experienced as a whole.