In 2015 and 2016, Sarah Ortmeyer exhibited her confrontations with escapism and greed in three separate shows in New York, Paris, and Vienna. The “Palm Tree” in the evn collection is from her solo exhibition Koko Paradise at Belvedere 21 in Vienna. The sheets, painted in various shades of gray, negotiate the themes of climate catastrophe, economic constraints, and dependencies on the so-called “good life” in ways that are as simple as they are catchy. The Western world’s longing for exoticism, which has been channeled in the motif of a palm tree for centuries, finds its contemporary equivalent here.

Heike Maier-Rieper, 2022 (translation: Virginia Dellenbaugh)