Flower monster
“Since 2014, I have wanted to discover the true “nature” of the cut flower industry. The giant markets, auction houses, and laboratories nurturing the “best” possible version of the plant. Collecting and imagining various, often contradictory human expectations of flowers led me to envision the Monster Flower: a speculative hybrid that renders the existing genetic manipulations visible – and tangible – in an obscure, thought-provoking form. The “Monster Flower I” became a monument of the unattainable – however imaginable – qualities we, as consumers, growers, and sellers, seek in commodified plants.”
In Vas Florum 13, 3D-printed flowers cast in bio-resin refer to one of the founding projects for the studio – the Monster Flower sculpture, which became a symbol of Marcin Rusak’s inextinguishable passion for flowers, offering a critical commentary on our desire to manipulate, preserve, and interpret floral matter. During a series of investigations, Marcin consulted plant geneticists and horticulture specialists from the Wageningen University in the Netherlands, hand-crafted original flower hybrids with flower specialists and engineers in Amsterdam, and implemented an array of 3D scanning techniques that were later digitised and processed into 3D renders, that later served as models for a unique sculpture 3D printed in nylon at the Medical University in London. The ghostly form of the sculpture imagines a hybrid of the often contradictory expectations of flowers as commodities – through genetic modifications and extensive breeding, the flower loses its scent but gains a longer vase life. It is bred to keep its petals, shed no pollen, and remain vibrant with colours. A strong, vertical stem is designed to fit as many as possible in the cart. The plant thus gains the ability to travel, and even has an internationally recognised passport. There is not much left to nature itself – a living matter is modified by humans to such an extent that it almost loses all its “natural” qualities, especially ones related to its reproduction capacities.
The sculpture encapsulates 3d-printed elements based on the original Monster Flower sculpture, referencing the manipulated shapes of various types of exotic plants such as orchids, anthuriums or strelitzias that are contrasted with real, “natural” dried plants that can easily be found in everyday landscapes – stems of wild blackberry bushes, wild elderberry flowers, dandelions, salsifies, hare’s tail grass, mulleins, and clematis (leather flower) seeds, which, dispersed by wind in the natural environment, offer a sharp symbolic contrast between the fertility of the ‘commoners’ and the conceptuality of the manmade.