Culture Screen - Kaiser, König, Edelmann, Bürger, Bauer, Bettelmann. – Ein Paravent als Weltbühne
LOCATION: Hotel Austria - Museum of Bad Ischl, Esplanade 10
4820 Bad Ischl, Austria
DATE: 09.10.2026 - 15.11.2026

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part of the series

"Archives of the Living: Painting Endangered Plants and Material Ecologies."

 

 MA – MATSU – MATSU

間 — 松 — 待つ | Interval. Pine. Waiting.

Ruth Mateus-Berr

In Ruth Mateus-Berr’s artistic practice, painting becomes a form of knowledge production. Her series Archives of the Living explores plants as carriers of ecological, cultural, and historical memory. Scientific research, mythology, and artistic intuition converge in a multilayered exploration of the living world.

With MA – MATSU – MATSU, the artist turns her attention to the pine tree and three Japanese concepts: Ma (間), the interval or space between; Matsu (松), the pine tree; and Matsu (待つ), waiting. Their phonetic similarity becomes the starting point for an exploration of time, memory, and transformation.

In Japan, the pine tree symbolizes longevity and renewal. Here, however, it appears as more than a botanical subject. Its painted form emerges through layers, superimpositions, and interruptions, revealing a process that understands knowledge not as a definitive result, but as an ongoing approach to understanding.

The Japanese folding screen, Byōbu (屏風), brings this exploration into physical space. Its folds create shifting perspectives, allowing the relationship between the visible and the hidden to be experienced spatially.

A living pine tree in the museum garden extends the work into a participatory installation. Visitors are invited to write down what they do not wish to carry into the future and attach their notes to the tree. This gesture refers to the Japanese practice of leaving unfavorable Omikuji fortunes behind at a shrine.

In this way, an archive of letting go emerges. Personal memories intersect with broader societal questions concerning war, violence, ecological destruction, and the possibilities of a different future.

Mateus-Berr thus reverses the traditional function of the archive: rather than preserving only what is deemed worthy of remembrance, it also temporarily holds what we wish to overcome.

Between the painted and the living pine, inside and outside, preservation and release, a space opens up—the interval that Japanese aesthetics calls Ma.

The pine tree becomes a silent witness to a future whose form remains uncertain.

At the heart of this work lies not the act of waiting for change, but the question of what we are willing to leave behind in order to make change possible.