„Fragment of the Rose Hedge” of Lisa Schiess / CH

At the double opening two artworks had been shown to the pubic: Lisa Schiess printed names of different roses on a fabric in a nearly endless row. She created this artwork of poetic words and names originally for the open-air art festival „Môtiers 2007 – art en plein air“, in French Switzerland, which she took a fragment suitable for the Merkurgarten from.

Instead of planting roses she is planting words, creating the actual rose hedge in the imagination of the audience. Therefore the „Rose Hedge” has the same methodology, as „Archaeology of Memories” and „Petit Swiss”: all of them are triggering the process of imagination through the physical presence of words.

„Moss landscapes” of Jürg Egli / CH

Jürg Egli created four moss landscapes with their own unique history. The first two landscapes he saved from his last exhibition, where he cut out a huge moss piece from the rooftop of a temporary art space and delivered it into the building. He took two smaller pieces from this artwork, one with a miniature chestnut tree growing from it and one without, both presented it a metal box. These deep green moss pieces have an amazing topological quality if you take a closer look at them: like a bonsai landscape from Southern England, they offer a great variety of different slopes and valleis, bushes (bushes) and trees.

The third one he took from a future construction site, where the extension of the Kunsthaus Zurich will be built, designed by British architect David Chipperfield. This area is covered now by different kinds of grasses, weeds and moss.

The fourth box contains wooden pieces of a possible artwork from a little pound, situated in a city-centre brownfield land, where the future Garden of Arts of the Kunsthaus Zurich will be built.