Jeff Schmuki

Jeff Schmuki explores the expressive qualities of plants as an artistic medium in his botanical drawings and wall installations. In works such as Monsanto Machine: GM Code, he employs genetically modified plants to create a composition resembling a genetic sequence. He disrupts the white walls and bare floors of human spaces with his programmed plantings, alluding to a future in which coding may disrupt our ecosystems. By leaving these installations to die in the gallery space, Schmuki ensures that the full cycle of intervention is seen, as impressive feats of manipulation ultimately succumb to isolation from the natural order.

Schmuki has exhibited and completed projects at the Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon, South Korea; the Goethe Institute of Cairo, Egypt; and CRETA Rome, Italy.

In 2009, the collaborative PlantBot Genetics was cofounded with wife and collaborator Wendy DesChene. Recent exhibitions by Jeff and PlantBot Genetics include Foodture at the Elaine L Jacob Gallery of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, and PlantBot Genetics: a Critical Contact Exhibition Series at the Cafritz Foundation Arts Center, Takoma Park, Maryland. He has also participated in artist lectures and studio visits at Long Island University in Brookville, New York. Public projects while artists-in-residence at The Hafnarborg Art Center and Museum in Iceland and the McColl Center for the Arts in North Carolina gained invitations to the Landscape Laboratory at Buitenwerkplaats‏ in the Netherlands, and the KulttuuriKauppila Art Center in Il, Finland, as well as Marfa Dialogues/St. Louis at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St Louis, Missouri.