About Peter Nowotny

We humans communicate with the outside world every day through the breath from our lungs. In plants it is the stomata, the pores, that connect them to their immediate surroundings. Through our breath we are in an oxygen–CO₂ communication with plants.

Looked at closely, the plants, with their photosynthesis, set the pace of this material communication. It is a food chain that keeps us alive.

On my walks in the woods and in my work in the garden I also perceive nature through the senses: its variety of forms and colours, but also its smells and sounds.

With these perceptions nature is no longer an object to me but a subject, and I feel part of a complex and also mysterious world. In this sensory communication I feel connected.

The works shown in the catalogue “Brain – Stomata” are titled “Mindset”, because this English word contains: way of thinking, attitude, mentality, outlook.

Is it not the first step towards securing the future of our planet that we readjust our mindset? Nature is not an outside, not a counterpart, and not merely a resource to be exploited. We metabolise with nature. Do we not turn into a tree by breathing out CO₂, and is oxygen not, in turn, a tree within us?

How closely we are related to plants can be seen in the fact that haemoglobin and chlorophyll differ only in their central atom: the red blood pigment has a central iron atom, while a magnesium ion sits at the centre of green chlorophyll.

My hope is that the veins and the capillaries of the plants pulse in unison.