When Albrecht Dürer created his watercolour The Great Piece of Turf in 1503, he focused his attention on the seemingly trivial: a piece of meadow. In the precise study of dandelions, plantain and various grasses, the profane vegetation itself becomes the object of concentrated observation. Among the plants, the common knawel grass (Dactylis glomerata) can also be identified, a widespread meadow grass that still characterises our landscapes today.

Andrea Grützner continues this tradition of close observation of nature with her show Rasenstücke. Based on the series Arkadia (from 2022), in which the artist transforms meadow landscapes into kaleidoscopic pictorial spaces using shimmering dichroic foils, the focus in Dactylis glomerata (2026) is on the variety of forms of pressed tussock grass. The starting point is all 79 herbarium specimens of this species from the Herbarium Dresdense, collected between 1796 and 2014. Grützner shows the digitised specimens in a mirrored negative: stalks, panicles and roots shine out of dark areas as blue, filigree structures. Attention is also drawn to the mounting of the documents with adhesive tape. Here, Grützner dissects the prints and organically folds the strips into the surface. The installation is also reminiscent of the early photographic process of the cyanotype and a sign language, without omitting references to archiving and digitisation processes. An open pictorial space is thus created between scientific collection object, photographic trace and graphic structure, in which observation of nature, collection material, human intervention and artistic transformation overlap.

Further information and the event programme can be found in the Folder.

From 16 April to 13 June 2026. June 2026, the Dresden exhibition space bautzner69 presents the work complex Erbgericht by Andrea Grützner. The focus here is on a place of social memory and transformation. In both presentations, photography becomes an experimental medium that makes processes of change visible.