Mainz, Germany
Drawings, notes, texts, objects, models, sculptures, installations, photos of performances, and interventions—Lois Weinberger’s recent exhibition employed a multitude of media, each one on a par with the others. Even within individual genres, Weinberger’s works are extremely heterogeneous in terms of style, theme, and choice of material. Thus, this exhibition, which followed no clear, recognizable order, required attentive observation, or rather careful reading. Weinberger’s approach could be grasped in passing from work to work, as viewers drew connections for themselves. In so doing, they experienced in a very vivid way how Weinberger is more concerned with transitions, with surpassing boundaries, than with defined forms and determined concepts. Specifically, the realm between culture and nature is his preferred terrain: the ephemeral, the peripheral, the fallow land on the outskirts of cities—out-of-the-way areas overgrown with modest ruderal plants, i.e., weeds. Here, nature is free from all aesthetic, philosophical, and ecological idealizations. Weinberger is something like a gardener of uncontrolled growth, who watches what happens when you simply leave a certain area to its own devices. This might be a plastic bag full of dirt; a plastic tub filled with water and containing letters (cultural signs per se), fired from clay that slowly becomes overgrown with algae. …see the entire review in the print version of November’s Sculpture magazine.
