The Nymphs Are Departed, Galerie Eric Mouchet Paris

18.05 - 13.07.2024

"Fascinating, surreal creatures from the plant and animal world combine beauty and ephemerality, the body and sexuality - a body of work that is as timeless as it is timeless, made up of truth and invention, life and death".

 Philip Demandt, Flesh For Fantasy, exh. cat., Städel Museum, Hatje Cantz, 2023

This exchange between the human and plant worlds became the common thread running through the artist's work. In the photographs from the Hortus conclusus series, conceived in 2009, the nude bust of the artist and cut flowers are shown in a situation of mutual observation, as if they were in modest communion.

In his works today, the plant world has completely invaded the image with its luxuriant power. The artist's virtuosity and the Latin titles of his sophisticated works arouse the viewer's curiosity about these plants and fool them into believing that they are what they are not. Hidden behind apparent botanical illustrations, the beauty of nature is revealed to be the fruit of the artist's pure imagination. Miron Schmückle invents an artificial life made up of flowers, vines, leaves and fruit that do not exist on Earth. And while these plants are rarely green and rootless, their iridescence, gradations and some of their shapes are more reminiscent of animal flesh. Membranes and vessels can be discerned, and references to sexual organs are never far away. It seems as if the plant world might have absorbed the human. These flowers are poisonous because they are beautiful and attractive, and they instil doubt about their true nature.