With Yesterday I Was a Tulip and You Loved Me, Anders SCRMN Meisner places the tulip at the center of his distinctive painterly universe. In the gallery’s project space, he presents a series of new paintings in which the flower is lifted out of its botanical context and transformed, through brushwork and variation, into sculptural objects. 

 

Shape, color and detail in petals and stems are magnified and intensified, allowing the tulip to unfold and emerge as something different. For Meisner, the tulip is far from innocent. It carries a cultural and historical weight that extends beyond its delicate appearance: 

 

“Tulips are not an innocent flower and that makes them fun to paint. They’re an industrial flower, produced in the wet, flat lands of the Netherlands. In Amsterdam, where I spent my 20s, the flower is not just a flower but also a national symbol—an ironic one, since it contains the story of one of the biggest market bubbles in economic history that led to panic and despair. To me, it’s a great reflector of the times we live in, where value is assigned to the weirdest of things.” 

 

SCRMN Meisner’s universe is steeped in irony and humor. Through his works he comments on cultural and social structures. The tulip becomes a metaphor for contemporary notions of value and human desire, while its aesthetic beauty and fragility remain intact. He is drawn to the ambivalent and the intriguing, to the place where beauty and irony coexist. 

 

The tulip is also a symbol of love, expressed through the simple act of giving flowers to someone dear. It is hopeful, thoughtful and tied to the flourishing energy of spring. For Meisner, the tulip holds multiple layers: poetic and historical, personal and hopeful, as well as socially reflective. 

 

The paintings in the exhibition are in full bloom, marked by SCRMN Meisner’s vibrant sense of color, his compositional playfulness and his skewed view of the world.