Potted plants set the tone—simple, yet too intentional to be overlooked. The hand-built pots, made with gardener Sebastian Rüdisüli, carry time, traces, and the impulse to shape with one’s hands—personal, grounding, immediate. Here, the cultivation of plants meets the cultivation of making, opening the question of what comes into view and what slips past.
In botany, the term plant blindness refers to the tendency to see plants as undifferentiated green. Bähler’s work resists this blur of perception. From this starting point, he turns to fragments left at the margins. A discarded family table is reshaped into softened benches and side pieces; concrete and steel are reworked into sculptural supports or a low table on castors; metal bends into lighting objects—pared back rather than engineered.
These works remain open to irregularities, proposing a way of making that is deliberate yet unforced—shaped through simple interventions rather than polish or market logic. Dust and Sunlight turns Bähler’s studio into a landscape—between shed and garden, in the long light of summer, where hours of sanding meet direct, intuitive making—unforced yet precise. The image recalls Gilles Clément’s jardin en mouvement, where growth is not imposed but guided. Bähler’s approach is one of tending—restrained yet open, attentive to what grows at the edges.
