Botanical Park | City Business Center | The alley by the “Corneliu Miklosi” Public Transport Museum  | Augustin Pacha str.

Spirit of the Woods (Silvia)

Reverse graffiti, aluminium patterns, variable dimensions 

Spirit of the Woods (Silvia) can be found in multiple outdoor locations in Timisoara, as well as at the Tram Museum. The outdoor locations all contain a reversed graffiti image of simplified plant shapes. Created with cut out stencils showing a variety of rare plants in the Banat region. The shapes are generated by keeping the otherwise dirty part of an area clean with high pressure washing. Time sensitive and functioning as a module, the work can easily grow and create a meta-pattern throughout the city and beyond. In this way, it is both ephemeral and monumental, based on removal rather than adding more “stuff” to the world.

One of the outdoor locations is the Botanical Park, which was designed by the architect Silvia Grumeza in 1966 and completed in 1990. A flower pattern on the metal fence surrounding the park has served as an inspiration for Klingberg’s commission at the Art Encounters Biennial 2019. The fact that this is a work that can endure is underlined by the wooden racks holding the stencils, ready to be used in the future and, for now, shown indoors as part of the biennial exhibition. As often is the case, the artist has created a work which is sensitive to the context while, at the same time, pursuing her long-term interest in patterns, continuity and transience. ML