Here nature bursts through, infiltrating this architectural structure and flouting the borders set by human hands. In his works, Henrique Oliveira continuously highlights the ways in which nature reconquers space.

Gnarled and knobbly roots break open walls and floors, growing into spaces, twisting and turning as they rise upwards. The trunks and branches create the room they need, energetically taking over the space around them. These intruders seem overpowering, and the invasive nature of this growth prompts us to reflect on the transformative power of natural processes.

For his large-scale installations, Oliveira often uses recycled materials such as plywood or construction site fences, peeling away layer after layer to create the thin, fragile elements for the outer skin of his installations. Interwoven over, next to and with one another, the individual parts are stapled together to create flowing tree-like structures.

He stages a kind of circular economy with natural raw materials originally turned into sheets and boards, and then ultimately reborn as natural forms in his works.

In a surreal way, the sculpture takes possession of an architecture originally created for the natural world. The orangery was constructed directly in the Botanic Garden as a temporary home for plants, protecting, above all, lemon trees, which are especially sensitive to cold.

Oliveira’s installation pays tribute to the old, tall spreading trees in the orangery’s immediate vicinity, and brings the vegetal world in an artificial form – as a sculptural simulation – back to a place originally intended for it.