Carl Kleiner Short Film Elevates Dying Tulips Into Art | Yellowtrace

Carl Kleiner Short Film Elevates Dying Tulips Into Art | Yellowtrace

Carl Kleiner Short Film Elevates Dying Tulips Into Art | Yellowtrace

 

There’s something especially beautiful about the way a tulip’s stem arcs and droops. Totally at the whim of the universe, it stretches gracefully towards the heat and light of the sun for a brief moment before succumbing to gravity and lowering its head. The fresh cut flower’s final dance is the inspiration for new a still-life series by Swedish photographer and image-maker Carl Kleiner. Titled ‘Postures’, it echoes Robert Mapplethorpe’s fascination with bending and fallen tulips. Propped up and wound around fine metal prongs, the images are painterly, dramatic studies that accentuate at the tulip’s delicate ballet.

With all the allusion of movement, it seems only natural for the series to evolve into film. Balance is a stop-motion version of Carl’s tulip series, following a few blush pink and buttery orange tulips’ rise and fall. As in Postures, the blooms are set against a stark grey background, which draws out the flower’s dense natural colour. Set to a bass-heavy dance track, the flowers really do appear to dance—their photosynthetic energy pulsing along with the beat.

And while it seems Carl has simply captured and sped up the tulip’s natural freefall and leisurely wilting, the blooms in Balance have been expertly timed and choreographed. When making the film, Carl ensured his arrangements were fast and precise, beginning with the freshest of flowers. Effectively manipulating nature, gravity needed to be considered too. In order to encourage the dancing flowers to swing and sway in the most artistic way, Carl considered how the flower’s weight would change in its dance as it slowly dried.

 

Carl Kleiner Short Film Elevates Dying Tulips Into Art | Yellowtrace

Carl Kleiner Short Film Elevates Dying Tulips Into Art | Yellowtrace

Carl Kleiner Short Film Elevates Dying Tulips Into Art | Yellowtrace


[Photography & video by Carl Kleiner.]

 



About The Author

Sammy Preston is a writer, editor, and curator living in Sydney. Working especially within art and design, and then lifestyle and culture more broadly, Sammy is a senior writer at Broadsheet, and a contributing digital editor at Foxtel's Lifestyle platform. Sammy also contributes regularly to art and design press like VAULT Magazine, Art Collector, Art Edit, Habitus, and Indesign magazines. She's written art essays for MUSEUM, exhibition texts for Sophie Gannon Gallery, and has worked as an arts and culture editor for FBi Radio. In 2016, she worked as part of the editorial team for Indesign Magazine as digital editor during the publication's pivotal print and website redesign. Sammy was also the founding manager and curator of contemporary art space Gallery 2010—a curator-run initiative housed within a Surry Hills loading dock. The gallery hosted exhibitions with emerging and established artists from 2012 until 2016.

3 Responses

  1. Kinetic Flowers | Moss and Fog

    […] In Carl Kleiner’s series called Postures, tulips are delicately and gracefully displayed on thin metal frames, allowing their long stems and slender leaves to be presented. A bit of subtle movement using stop-motion adds to the composition. Via Yellowtrace: […]

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  2. The Graceful Movement of Dancing Tulips Showcased by Carl Kleiner – artreflector.com

    […] Carl Kleiner creates sleek editorial content for fashion and lifestyle brands, and that sensibility shows in his photo and video series Postures which features artfully arranged tulips. Using minimal metal rods, bent at strategic ends and angles, Kleiner showcases the graceful curves of the flowers’ long necks and gently ruffled petals and leaves. A further sense of movement is instilled through the stop-motion video, which combines still photos of the blossoms’ subtle changes into a dramatic dance. You can see more from the Swedish photographer on Instagram and Vimeo. (via Yellowtrace) […]

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