Johanna Legnar & Thea Runde: ‘In-Between Existence’

Gallery Asna presents “In-Between Existence” which opens Saturday 3rd of May at 5:30pm and will run until the 24th of May.

The collaboration of the two local artists, Johanna Legnar and Thea Runde, combines botanical watercolour with digital typographic artworks.

Thea Mercer is an arts facilitator and botanical illustrator. Rooted in eco-minimalism, her work explores plant life through macrophotography, stippling and watercolour. A residency at the burren college of art informed her approach to working within fragile environments. Along Clonakilty’s estuary, she used a digital microscope to record botanical details, later reimagined as layered collage on paper and wood. These slow, analogue methods reflect later and flora. This exhibition invites viewers into a magnified garden, where varying scales reveal subtle often unseen features. further reflecting on our relationship with the natural world-suggests that even the smallest forms hold significance.

Johanna Legnar’s series “My neurodivergent brain” shows graphic arts about neurodiversity in a minimalist and typographic design style. After she felt she was struggling with different issues, like noise sensitivity or emotional imbalance, all her life only for recent years, she considers herself having ADHD and Autism. Now, the 37 year old German likes to address different brain issues in an artistic way. For Johanna, digital created graphic artworks are ideal to express her thoughts and feelings. Being neurodivergent is another way of internal existence, which isn’t visible. Another motivation is to spread awareness about these often misunderstood ways of being.

Though distinct in subject, both artists reveal the often overlooked-one through plant profiles, the other through the inner architecture of neurodivergent minds. using magnification and minimalism, their practices draw attention to the subtle details, offering perspectives on presence and diversity. Through analogue and digital means, each invites the viewer to consider the complexity of systems – ecological and neurological – that shape how we perceive the world.