Apple. An Introduction (Over and over and once again), 2013-26
by Antje Majewski and Paweł Freisler
The apple takes centre stage here: drawing on its origins in the Caucasus, the exhibition and project “The Apple. An Introduction. (Over and over and over again.)” at PAVILLON PARZELLE 3 explores the apple as an object of art – drawn, carved and photographed – which connects people and communities worldwide.
Since 2013, the artistic project has focussed on the apple in its incredible diversity of ornaments, which Freisler carves into natural apples; but also in the richness of colours, rituals, songs and recipes that are produced and inspired by apples. The collaboration is based on a written correspondence between the artist Antje Majewski and the reclusive Polish conceptual artist Paweł Freisler. Over the course of more than a year, the exhibition and project in Dresden will be dedicated to the community-building power of the apple, featuring lectures, events and celebrations. The planting of apple trees of the endangered Caucasian wild apple Malus sieversii, from which today’s cultivated apples are descended, and the fact that its habitat—ancient apple forests near Almaty—is currently being destroyed, is an essential part of the project.
Antje Majewski (born in 1968 in Mari, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. As an artist, painter, filmmaker and initiator of various research projects, she combines artistic approaches with activism. Her transdisciplinary practice explores political ecologies and opportunities for collaboration between humans and nature.
Paweł Freisler (born 1942 in Kaposvár, Hungary) lives and works in Sweden.
From the beginning of his artistic practice, he has focused not on exhibiting material works of art, but on communicating and disseminating narratives.
For more than ten years he has collaborated with Antje Majewski.
The exhibition, which links the PARZELLE 3 Pavilion directly to one of the oldest Garden arbours in Flora 1, also explores arbours, the ‘Yellow House’ in Sweden and the ‘White House’ in Dresden, as simple places for reconnecting with nature and contemplating the cycles of growth and decay.