On October 15th, the group exhibition, The Glenkeen Variations: Aftergrowth, opened at Crespo Foundation, Crespo Haus, Weißfrauenstraße 1–3, 60311 Frankfurt. This was my first collaboration with choreographers based in Stockholm, who I met while on an artist residency in Ireland last year. Installation views of the performance Imprints & Orientations, by choreographers / dancers, Hana Lee Erdman and Louise Dahl. Performed by Louise Dahl, Philip Berlin, and Ulrika Berg. On view at Crespo Foundation through January 24, 2027.
Artistic collaboration / scenography: Lisa Blas
Four shaped carpets printed from paintings * by Lisa Blas.
Colaris S-Print on machine-tufted 100% polyamide, made in Belgium. Dimensions: 4 x 4 meters, 2.5 x 2.5 meters, 2 x 2 meters, 2 x 3 meters.
* Lisa Blas, Routes to Oceania: despongga | point break, Acrylic and interference paint on canvas, 40 x 40 cm, 16 x 16 inches, 2025
* Lisa Blas, Routes to Oceania: afao | mist, Acrylic and interference paint on canvas, 40 x 40 cm, 16 x 16 inches, 2025
* Lisa Blas, Ocular dust, Rome, summer 2018, Acrylic and interference paint on canvas, 43 x 35.5 cm, 17 x 24 inches, 2022
Crespo Foundation, Frankfurt. October 16, 2026.
“‘Gardening is a commitment to the future,’ wrote Derek Jarman when he was cultivating his shingle plot at Dungeness; ‘blind like any act of faith’. Glenkeen Garden – ‘beautiful valley’ in Irish – grew out of a similar future-oriented commitment. For over twenty years, photographer and Crespo Foundation founder Ulrike Crespo (1950–2019) worked a stretch of waterlogged farmland overlooking Roaringwater Bay on Ireland’s southwest coast, turning it into a vast landscaped garden; half cultivated, half kept wild. Her wish was for it to remain, after her passing, a place of contemplation, creative experimentation and communing. Since 2021, Glenkeen Garden has brought together artists, writers, musicians, thinkers and gardeners who immerse themselves in it and continue to care for it. Not merely a gesture towards conservation, but one that points toward future encounters, new relations and forms of being together that have not yet taken shape.”
Crespo Foundation.
Louise Dahl, Lisa Blas and Hana Lee Erdman, Crespo Foundation, Frankfurt, October 16, 2026.