CARLONE CONTEMPORARY: herman de vries at the Upper Belvedere in Vienna, Austria, presents a single, potent installation by the Dutch artist within the historic Carlone Hall. Central to the display is the 1991 work "108 pounds of lavender flowers," an elliptical arrangement of dried blossoms placed directly on the floor. This conceptual piece brings a distinct olfactory element to the museum, contrasting the organic simplicity of the lavender with the ornate Baroque ceiling frescoes above.

The exhibition highlights de vries’s background as a trained botanist and his evolution from the Dutch "nul" group to becoming a pioneer of Environmental Art. His practice involves gathering materials from the natural world—stones, earth, and plants—and reordering them through scientific methods of classification. Here, the focus is on the inherent aesthetic power of natural resources when removed from their original context and placed in a formal setting.

By positioning contemporary environmental concerns within a room dedicated to the mythological deities Apollo and Diana, the presentation bridges centuries of cultural history. It offers a meditative look at de vries’s credo that nature itself is art, requiring no further intervention other than observation and presentation.

herman de vries (b. 1931, Alkmaar) is a Dutch artist, trained botanist and former landscape gardener who has spent more than five decades working from the conviction that nature itself is art. He began with Art Informel and the Dutch group nul, then increasingly turned toward ecological questions, collecting flowers, earth, stones, branches, grasses and minerals and arranging them through methods that combine scientific observation, classification and philosophy. He represented the Netherlands at the 2015 Venice Biennale.

A brief but aromatic encounter for those interested in minimalism, botany, and the intersection of historic architecture with natural elements.

Take a moment to stand at the edge of the lavender field and look upward; the contrast between the floor-bound organic mass and the celestial ceiling frescoes is the core of the experience.