"[...] Finally, after some reflection, he (the director) decided to throw the chewing gum in the compost. The chewing gum landed in the pile of green and brown greenery, and stayed pink. For a few days, as I passed by, I saw the chewing gum and stopped in front of it. The chewing gum in the compost, what a beautiful metaphor. It was obvious and naïve. He didn’t want to do something wrong, to put it in the wrong place. It was out of hope, out of conviction. [...]"

Excerpt from the Master's thesis "! A Myth, Again!", chapter "The Chewing Gum in the Compost: Failure" by Rebecca Solari, 2023

Magic trees in chewing-gum flavour was stucked to 15 diffferent compost in Biel. A battle of taste and flavours. Kochend take the chewing-gum as a performative character of eternality, elasticity, with the pink chimical color. It’s the perfect industrial product, the perfect art piece that we try to incorporate in cyclic methodologies and systems of beliefs (the compost). As the magic tree in shape of the pine tree: printed, smellying and left forever in a car. The contradictory elements met in a duration of 5 to 20 days in different compost of the art-space area. This exhibition, like an exploration cabinet, highlights these narratives in an installative and olfactory way.

Images: Evo Lbei

The work was presented at Espa Annexe (Biel, ch)

Kochend
collage, drawings, magi trees, compost, video (16min)
variable dimensions