Flowering Transition

Flowering Transition emerged as an ongoing speculative research project driven by our curiosity and an extensive analysis of the cut-flower industry, and the science and technology that fuel it. Discarded flowers found at one of London’s flower markets triggered our conceptual and material experiments, laying a foundation for our studio’s core interests and values.

The growing consumerist culture, paired with the flower trade boom, led to a point where flowers became treated as commodities governed by the global principles of the market. As the industry grew and customers’ preferences changed, a quest to create the perfect flower blossomed. The ideal plant would not only suit our subjective taste, but also meet the high requirements of the breeders and sellers, who, backed by geneticists and engineers, manipulated the flowers to obtain brighter colours, straighter stems, and longer vase lives, all while sacrificing the plants’ other qualities such as scent, which, in the natural environment, is vital for the plant’s reproduction and survival. These traits were synthesised in Monster Flower: a conceptual sculpture that emerged through a multi-stage research process.

In an attempt to create a super bloom—a plant that would meet all the industry’s requirements, we teamed up with plant specialists and engineers and assembled new flower hybrids. But since perfection is always monstrous, our work became a balancing act between what was expected and what was possible. Altering the incompatible species by hand and photographing the monstrous outcomes, we have then documented our trials in a series of botanical engravings illustrated by Clara Lacy. Finally, the imagined superbloom acquired a palpable, three-dimensional body: it became the Monster Flower sculpture.

The project also involved experimenting with processing waste flowers and creating unique artworks that highlighted their intangible qualities: their ephemeral colours, that, pressed onto canvas with a traditional mangle, formed bright, abstract patterns; their perishable materiality, which, treated as source material, was condensed in an archetypal form of a vessel; and distilling their scent, which revealed striking differences between flowers bred in private gardens, offered in flower shops, and sold in supermarkets.
The entire project was summarised in a richly illustrated publication documenting every step of the journey, and revealing Marcin’s family’s flower-breeding background. First presented during Marcin Rusak’s graduation show, “Inflorescence and Other Artefacts” in London in 2015, artefacts from the Flowering Transition series were showcased in various institutional contexts, from internationally acclaimed group exhibitions to self-initiated concepts in Milan and Ljubljana.