Flowers you gave to me

Installation view of the current exhibition

Ute Behrend

Flowers you gave to me, 2024

In the morning I send you the violets / that I found in the forest / and in the evening I bring roses / that I broke in the twilight hours.
Do you know what the pretty flowers / would like to tell you? / Be faithful to me by day / And love me by night.

With his subtle mockery, Heinrich Heine here pokes fun at the language of flowers, which was used in the 19th century to express feelings “through the flower” and entirely without words. His lyrical self doesn’t relies on unspoken messages, but prefers to tell his beloved quite bluntly about his expectations.

Ute Behrend also plays with blunt-unblunt expectations in her photo series “Flowers you gave to me”, about which she says: “I make fun in an ambivalent way of the fact that women dream of men they are in love with standing outside their door with flowers to show them that they reciprocate their love.“

Ute Behrend
Florian, Noah, Thomas and Fritz from the series Flowers you gave to me, 2024

We all take on the perspective of the recipients and experience the very moment of delivery: the various bouquets of flowers are close-up and in sharp focus, the men behind are blurred and sometimes not even clearly recognizable. But they are sufficiently characterized to evoke the idea of a certain type. The various types of flowers arrangements in the foreground correspond to this: they are what it is all about here; they are preserved in the photo, and with them the memory of the moment of falling in love.

For me, the works have a nice touch of lightness, humour and a lot of narrative. Each work could be the beginning or the end of a story. This narrative, sometimes even fairytale-like quality, crops up again and again in Ute Behrend’s work. Her photographic works often revolve around the moment in which something general appears in the fleeting. As a result, her works appear random and this is precisely where her art is revealed.

Ute Behrend herself is just as versatile as her work: She is an artist, publisher and lecturer. Her photographic works and video installations have been exhibited internationally. Ute Behrend lives and works in Cologne, is co-founder of the publishing house BUMMBUMM BOOKS and has been on the board of the German Photographic Academy (DFA) since 2021.

Dr. Andrea Knop
Art Advisor