Peter Reichenbach developed the project ‘sevengardens’, based on dyeplant-gardens, as a social sculpture. “The idea is to build a social learning network, where art serves as a solution-oriented educational game, actively addressing relevant topics such as climate change, genetic erosion, etc,” says the artist. The UN decade of ‘Education for sustainable development (ESD)’, which aims at integrating sustainability worldwide within the education system, plays a central role in the concept of ‘sevengardens’. In doing so, Reichenbach’s concern is not only about teaching processes, but above all about raising awareness of basic skills – one’s own skills and the ones of others. In essence, it’s about building knowledge in order to create perspectives and an awareness of sustainability.
The production and subsequent use of natural colors is ideally suited to provide a simple way of using natural resources. Art and creativity have been since the Neolithic period the key for this. To manufacture color within a team using an indigenous method, and thus to think and develop the basis for a transformation of society together for beyond the garden, is Peter Reichenbach’s approach.
Crossing borders belongs to the basic principles of ‘sevengardens’. These borders are the ones between countries – ‘sevengardens’ by now has partners all over the world – as well as the imaginary boundaries between teachers and students, different fields, children’s art and high culture, and many more. Within a culture of learning together and from each other, art and science come together, and cultural institutions learn from schools, who practice inclusion and heterogeneous aged teaching. Peter Reichenbach presents his artwork with colours made by children, in places of fine arts, where they simultaneously stand alongside the works of established artists.
“With this the Koan of my Zen Master Tong was fulfilled, who once told me that I should start seven gardens.”
Reichenbach 1996
Biographie
Peter Reichenbach born in Essen ind 1962, lives and works in Essen and within the wordwide net of lebt dyeplant-gardens