EXPANDED FIELD II THE TREE Exhibition in MITTE37

[Lars Schumacher]

EXPANDED FIELD II THE TREE at Kunstraum MITTE37 presents the tree as a multifaceted cultural figure that binds artistic imagination, memory, and future thinking into a single, resonant field. Bringing together contributions from more than thirty nations, the exhibition unfolds as an international constellation of images, gestures, and conceptual approaches in which the tree emerges as an aesthetic, poetic, and symbolic force.

Within this expanded field, the tree appears first as an archive — a living structure whose rings carry traces of time, climate, and history. Artists translate this idea into lines, strata, textures, and digital patterns, creating drawings, photographs, and paintings that treat the tree as a growing memory. Here, remembrance becomes an organic process, continuously unfolding and accumulating.

At the same time, the exhibition reveals the tree as a mythic figure. In lyrical, narrative, and experimental works, it becomes a world tree, a point of origin, a threshold between earth and sky. Some artists revisit ancient stories; others invent new ones. Together, they form a space that invites viewers to engage with the deep cultural significance of the tree as a symbol of connection, transition, and vitality.

In many contributions, the tree emerges as a figure of the future. Ecological visions, digital nature forms, and hybrid image worlds explore the tree as a model for sustainable thinking and for new relationships between humans and their environments. Natural materials, digital processes, and photographic series trace light, seasons, and the diversity of arboreal forms, creating a dialogue between tradition and innovation, between analogue and digital practices.

The exhibition is expanded by Plant and Seed, a participatory project in which numerous contributors sent seeds or small saplings — a simple, grounded gesture that links artistic practice with growth and care. These contributions form a living archive that makes the conceptual figure of the tree directly tangible. In the spirit of Joseph Beuys’s expanded concept of art, Plant and Seed becomes a social sculpture: a communal act, a communicative field, and an impulse toward future transformation.

Kunstraum MITTE37 transforms into an immersive environment shaped by collective thinking and shared experience. The diversity of media — painting, drawing, photography, digital art, text, and hybrid formats — underscores the openness of the project. The vertical 2:3 format reinforces the tree’s upright presence and creates a calm, precise spatial rhythm. The exhibition resembles a forest in which each tree tells its own story while contributing to a larger whole.

EXPANDED FIELD II – THE TREE is more than an exhibition; it is a resonant space where art, nature, and memory interact. It presents the tree as a universal figure — as thought, as body, as future — and demonstrates how artistic practice can generate impulses that extend far beyond the gallery.

Participating Artists

The exhibition features contributions from:

Péter Abajkovics, Hungary

José Luis Alcalde Soberanes, Spain

Meral Ağar, Turkey

MH//Antipode, Germany

Derya Avci, Turkey

Angel Bortot, Venezuela

Walter Bachmann, Germany

Ceren Baykan, Türkiye

Marzia Maria Braglia, Italy

Francesca Bella, Italy

Melanie Bäreis, Germany

Hans Braumüller, Germany

Anna Flávia Schmitt Wyse Baranski, Brazil

Adriana Horsmann, Argentina

Maria do Carmo Both, Brasil

Hanh Chau, China

Suely Castro Mello, Brasil

Binod Dawadi, Nepal

Michel Della Vedova, France

Vilma Dobilaitė, Spain

Floki Gauvry, Argentina

Rosalie Gancie, USA

Susan Gold, Canada

Eva Grabenhofer, Austria

Nihal Gures, Turkey

Carlo Maria Giudici, Italy

Leon Hainzl, Austria

Ed Hanssen, The Netherlands

Ingeborg Henrichs, Germany

Ulrich Rainald Hoffmann, Germany

Eleni Ioannou, Greece

Suzlee Ibrahim, Malaysia

Alexandru Jakabházi, Romania

Jeeja Jeeja Navghare, India

Gloria Keh, Singapore

Gabrielė Kuizinaitė, Lithuania

Varju Krisztián, Hungary

William Lee, Austria

Claudia Liekam, Germany

Alexander Limarev, Russia

Petra Lorenz, Germany

Adriana Lucaciu, Romania

Katerina Mandarik, France

Rebeca Martell, Mexico

Manuela Merl, Germany

Patty Milligan, Canada

Sibylle Möndel, Germany

Asma Ounine, Morocco

Zorica Obradović, Serbia

Wayne Owen, United Kingdom

Ovidiu Petca, Romania

Linda Pelati, Italy

Maria Grazia Piazza, Italy

Hugo Pontes, Brasil

Radoslav Rochallyi, Slovakia

Rado Rochallyi, Slovakia

Dale Roberts, Canada

Serena Rossi, Italy

Renate Helene Schweizer, Germany

Friedrich Schumacher, Germany

Susanne Schumacher, Germany

Rosana Schmitt, Brazil

Beate Senf-Hentsch, Germany

Carmela Sarcina, Italy

Agnieszka Sawicka, Poland

Fidels Daughter, Germany

Snappy, Canada

Dirk Strauch, Germany

Paulo Teles, Portugal

Stephen Tomasko, USA

Horst Tress, Germany

Mikel Untzilla, Argentina

Marta Valiani, Italy

Stella Maris Velasco, Argentina

Daniele Virgilio, Italy

Rainer Wieczorek, Germany

Jina Wallwork, United Kingdom

Xuran Zhang, China

_guroga, Venezuela

Contact 

Kunstraum MITTE37 Mittelstraße 37 31303 Burgdorf / Hannover, Germany info[at]mitte37.de www.mitte37.de Susanne Schumacher — Tel. [phone]

Voices of the Trees

The reading “Voices of the Trees” unfolds within the framework of EXPANDED FIELD II THE TREE, an international exhibition at Kunstraum MITTE37 that situates the tree as a figure of memory, myth, and futurity. On 1 October 2026 at 18:30, the space becomes a site where literary practice and visual art meet, opening a 90‑minute passage through language, landscape, and the ecological imagination. Authors Tarja Sohmer and Dirk Strauch bring their distinct voices into dialogue with the exhibition’s global constellation of works, extending its thematic field into the realm of text. Sohmer, Finnish-born and based in Hannover, is known for her precise, sensorial prose that binds inner and outer geographies. Her novels Das Verbleichen der weißen Stadt and Nächte mit Tom reveal a writer attuned to the subtle resonances between human experience and natural environments. For this evening, she presents newly written, previously unpublished pieces—texts shaped only a week earlier during an intensive writing workshop held in the gallery.

Strauch, a Burgdorf-based poet, translator, and long-standing figure of the regional literary scene, contributes a lyrical practice grounded in clarity, form, and the sonnet tradition. His tree-related poems open acoustic and conceptual spaces where nature, language, and recollection intertwine. Together, Sohmer and Strauch offer a literary counterpoint to the exhibition’s visual works, expanding its conceptual reach through rhythm, voice, and narrative.

The reading also introduces fresh material from the workshop, where participants explored the tree as motif, metaphor, and structural principle—experimenting with fragments, polyphonic approaches, and memory-based writing. In the spirit of openness that characterizes both the exhibition and the Plant and Seed Project, additional poets and writers are invited to contribute spontaneous readings of their latest tree-related texts. This creates an evening that is not only curated but also porous, responsive, and collectively animated.

Hosted by artist Susanne Schumacher and curated by Lars Schumacher, Kunstraum MITTE37 becomes a laboratory in which art, ecology, and language intersect. The reading acts as a literary stratum within the expanded field of the exhibition—situated between image and text, archive and action, nature and culture. It invites visitors to listen, to dwell, and to consider how trees speak across artistic disciplines and human imagination.

A night of voices, images, words, and reverberations: a slow walk through forests, rings, myths, and futures—an invitation to hear what trees might tell us.