Falling Garden Gerda Steiner &Jörg Lenzlinger

Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger have been focusing on creating live immersive art installations since their collaboration in 1997. Their work often mixes natural and man-made elements, blurring the boundaries between fantasy and reality and reflecting the desire of people living in contemporary cities for contact and dialogue with nature.

The Falling garden is a large-scale site-specific art installation created by the artists for the 50th Venice Biennial in 2003. In the 17th century church of San Stae, colourful flowers, branches and seeds pour down from the ceiling and envelop the viewer. Baobab seeds from Australia, elderberry and magnolia branches from Switzerland, seaweed from Korea and other botanical tokens from around the globe dance in mid-air. Its playfulness and whimsy contrasts with the church's huge, time-honoured structural aesthetic. The artist hopes that the work will captivate the viewer like a real dream, allowing the viewer to immerse themselves in this seemingly magical space, allowing their minds to wander and flow, perceiving the wonder and immortality of time and nature.

The artist creates a poetic and surrealistic dreamscape using the most natural language of art, allowing the viewer to relax and heal themselves. Nature is expressed in the piece as a beauty in its simplest form. The work has no complication, the viewer has to relax and observe, letting their mind drift, fully appreciating and taking in the work. That is what I really love about this, the viewer does not have to try and work out a hidden meaning of the piece or concentrate hard to enjoy it you can simply appreciate it for what it is.