04/06/22 - 23/07/22
Andrea Büttner
Part 1: Asparagus Harvest

This text was written by Patrizia Dander in the context of Triebe, Andrea Büttner’s solo show presented at Galerie Tschudi (CH) in 2021.

In the spring of 2020, Andrea Büttner began to observe and draw the white asparagus harvest in the countryside around Berlin. In classic plein-air style, she observed and sketched the workers during the physically demanding labour of harvest, which is mostly done by hand to this day. Cultivated in row upon row of long mounds of soil, protected from cold and sunlight with heavy plastic sheets, white asparagus grows entirely under the earth. Working with speed and precision, experienced harvesters first use two fingers to uncover the sensitive asparagus tips that peek out of the compact soil. They dig touncover the shoots and snap the shaft from the root with an asparagus knife, about 20 cm below the surface. They then use a trowel to backfill and smooth the soil to allow new shoots to grow from the root, recovering the mound with plastic sheeting. These steps of labour, which are all carried out in a stooped position—with a straight back and slightly bent knees—are repeated meter by meter, row by row, for a period of 10 weeks, which is how long the harvest usually takes. The sketch books, woodcuts, etchings, carvings, and ceramic table-top sculpture in the exhibition Triebe (German for “shoots” or “spears”, but also “drives”) all reference the asparagus harvest. Starting with numerous drawings that roughly outline the various scenes and steps of work involved, over the course of the past year Andrea Büttner has created a dense and complex group of works dedicated to various impressions of the asparagus harvest: from the functional, geometric shape of the mounds and the contours of the seasonal workers’ bent over bodies, to details such as their hands penetrating the earth.