Yadegar Asisi

CAROLA'S GARDEN

A return to paradise

An exhibition tour with a 360° panorama that makes the home garden an exotic, microscopic paradise.

CAROLAS GARTEN shows nature on our doorstep. But not in the way we perceive it every day. In the exhibition tour, a supposedly banal place like a Leipzig allotment garden becomes an exotic biotope with fascinating plants and animals that, in their oversized representation, suddenly make the viewer seem tiny. In the panorama, at 100 × 31 metres probably the largest 360° installation in the world, one discovers the microcosm before our feet in a hundredfold magnification.

Book tickets

Visit Panometer

Exhibition tour

A garden as a source of inspiration

In the accompanying exhibition, Yadegar Asisi shows more than 100 works inspired by a typical allotment garden: As in a classical gallery, one moves through installations, drawings, watercolours, acrylic paintings as well as photographic and filmic works and thus discovers the garden from the perspective of a contemporary artist. Colours, forms and light, but also the becoming and passing away as part of our cycle of life can be experienced emotionally in an exhibition.

"I believe in the power and beauty of life. You can discover this even in something as simple as this garden. From the big to the smallest detail."

Yadegar Asisi

Panorama

A world as you have never seen it before

At the climax of the tour, you are immersed in a panorama that lets you experience the garden from the perspective of an insect. As if standing in front of the gigantic, enlarged pistil of a camomile, a fascinating, alien scenery opens up. A bee about 25 metres tall is pollinating a camomile flower and collecting nectar. All around, the view opens up to the world of the surrounding garden with huge flowers, wild and useful plants, insects and other details. You are right in the middle of a microscopically enlarged paradise.

Making Of

A place shows its effect

The garden that inspired YadegarAsisi to create this project is not just any fictional place. It is a real allotment garden on the outskirts of Leipzig, the retreat and place of recuperation of a deceased colleague who, despite a serious illness, always showed a remarkable zest for life. She found this in her garden -reason enough for YadegarAsisi to create an artistic monument and thus also to commemorate Carola and her very personal happiness.After spending some time on site, he initially captured it in numerous sketches, aquariums and studies. This gave rise to the idea of capturing the entire garden in a panorama that gives the viewer a perspective that can only be found in primeval forests or other exotic places:A perspective that makes us feel part of an effective nature again just by the majestic size of the surrounding animals and plants.

 

More than macro photography

As with every asisi panorama, the initial drawings are followed by a creative process lasting years, as a result of which a high-resolution digital painting is created from 3D models, countless individual photographs, drawings and light studies. For CAROLAíS GARDEN, YadegarAsisi and his team photographed thousands upon thousands of native animals and plants in Leipzig and the surrounding area. Where the magnification of macro photography was not sufficient, some parts of the picture were even taken with the help of scanning electron microscopes, post-coloured in digital image processing and inserted into the panorama. This gives us an insight into structures and details that otherwise remain hidden from the human eye.

The garden becomes a work of art

After completion of the panorama and accompanying exhibition, the final staging of CAROLAíS GARDEN took place in January 2019 at the Panometer Leipzig. In this part of the design process, which was immensely important for the artist, the work was given its own day and night changes specially adapted to the garden theme, together with the appropriate lighting mood and the catchy background sound. For the latter, YadegarAsisi has always worked with the well-known composer and pianist Eric Babak. In close collaboration, the two artists combine light, image and sound to create an atmospheric overall installation. The soundscape of insect buzzes, bird calls, animal calls and lively melodies perfects the immersive experience and transports us directly into a landscape that we seem to know but have never wholly seen or felt.

 

Panorama music and soundscape by Eric Babak

From the pilot project EVEREST onwards, Yadegar Asisi is collaborating with the well-known composer and pianist Eric Babak. In close collaboration between the two artists, the impressive soundscape of the panoramas is harmonized directly in the exhibition space with the lighting patterns to create an atmospheric overall installation. Depending on the project, the productions use, among other things, large orchestras and choirs, but also minimalist synthesizer sounds in combination with everyday noises to make the special atmosphere of the themes audible and tangible in the constant change of panorama sequences.

www.ericbabak.com