Saskia Groneberg | Büropflanze | 2012 08.12.2018 – 17.02.2019 | Fotomuseum Winterthur

SITUATION #155

Büropflanze, spread from the artist book, 2012 © Saskia Groneberg
Saskia Groneberg, Büropflanze, 2012, SITUATION #155, SITUATIONS/To look is to labor, installation view at Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2018 © Philipp Ottendörfer
Saskia Groneberg, Büropflanze, 2012, SITUATION #155, SITUATIONS/To look is to labor, installation view at Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2018 © Philipp Ottendörfer

The practice of decorating the workplace with office plants is widespread, but rarely reflected in more detail. In her comprehensive artist book Büropflanze (office plant), the German artist Saskia Groneberg pays tribute to these inconspicuous everyday objects by exposing office plants as projections of profound human desires. These living, growing organisms – as a form of synthesized nature – seem to provide, in the least, a visual retreat from the dehumanised office spaces in which technical products and anonymised structures predominate. At the same time, Groneberg takes stock of the various typologies of office plants by creating a herbarium that is reminiscent of old illustrated botany books – further evoking the early days of photography, which was to play a central role in the labour of scientific classification. In Groneberg's Büropflanze, however, the photographic reproduction is based on a very arduous scanning process - using a technical device that can be found in almost every office today.

More by Saskia Groneberg: saskiagroneberg.de