This book is a journey into the cosmos of the Brazilian-Swiss artist Pedro Wirz, in which humans and animals, but also legendary creatures coexist. His artistic investigation of the systemic devastation of diversity witnessed across biological, cultural, and ethnic fronts today is based on scientific explorations, but also on his very own experiences within a particularly threatened ecosystem. The child of an agronomist and a biologist, Wirz spent most of his youth in the tropical Vale do Paraíba in Brazil. To this day, his fascination with science as much as with indigenous mythologies continues to inform his work. He creates his sculptures and installations from a mixture of organic materials like wax, earth, wood, clay and straw as well as artifacts of the consumer world such as toy cars, dolls, textile remnants, Lego, old clothes and electronic devices. However, Wirz is also interested in new, promising materials such as mushroom threads, bamboo or nanomaterials. With his combination of paradoxical elements from the remotest past and the foreseeable future, from technological reality and poetic imagination, Pedro Wirz brings back the original familiarity that used to exist between science and mythology.

PEDRO WIRZ (*1981, Pindamonhangaba, Brazil) is a Brazilian-Swiss visual artist dealing with the coexistence of different species within an ecosystem. His work has been exhibited at Kunsthalle Basel, Palais de Tokyo, Hessel Museum of Art, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart and Kunstverein Dortmund, among others.