heARTbeat: Qi Wei’s Exploded Flowers Portend the End of a Season


Qi Wei’s Exploded Flowers series explores the complexities of nature in order to appreciate its simple beauty.

Artist Qi Wei says of his Exploded Flowers series, “The use of photography captures the beauty and intricacies of nature’s flowers in the moment of full bloom, and at the same time let you have a different appreciation of their beauty.”


The shifting of seasons gives us a new perspective, keeping us fresh and engaged with the world. The end of summer, in particular, brings with it an awareness of two seasons ahead: Autumn being the season of new projects and the school year ahead; soon, the ringing in of the holidays signals that winter is just around the corner.

For that reason, Qi Wei’s series caught our eye. Not quite the perfect portrait of the perfect flower, Wei breaks down the shape of things we know inherently, but encounter in a new way.

After all, who hasn’t spent a lazy summer day pulling the leaves and petals from a flower, inspecting the parts with appreciation and awe, only to see them scattered to the ground, forgotten with the moment?

Wei sets us up to remember that moment, the meticulous rearrangement of familiar flowers has us look twice at the slightly disorienting new patterns created from deconstructed nature.

Wei, who was inspired by Todd McLellan’s Disassembly series, says of the work:

“The act of disassembly (I hesitate to use the term dissection because this series is not meant to be a scientific treatise) lays bare the various shapes and textures of the flowers, and what is interesting to me is how much more expanded some flowers can get when they are disassembled – the relative surface area to size of a rose is so much greater compared to a larger flower like the sunflower.”

As the end of this season approaches, perhaps it is the perfect time to consider the shape of things, capture this moment, and enjoy the last long rays of the sun, the last colorful petals of the season. And just in case you miss the real nature of it, Qi Wei’s Exploded Flowers series is available to help you do just that.

 

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her personal blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

 

Images: My Modern Met

Dominique Pacheco

Dominique Pacheco is the author of EcoSalon's weekly heARTbeat column.