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Does living nature lend itself as a material for art? Around 1969, sculptor Sjoerd Buisman proved that it is possible to make works of art from living plants and trees. He was the first Dutch artist to experiment with nature as an alternative to stone and bronze.

Buisman sprinkled birdseed on a moist flannel blanket, waited until the germs took root in the fabric, hung the blanket up, and lo and behold: a living 'painting' was created. Buisman kept the blanket moist, so that the plants continued to grow, towards the light and against the force of gravity, i.e. upwards.

As an artist, Buisman is a researcher and manipulator of nature. He shows us that nature can be manipulated, but that it grows according to its own laws. He placed willows with their crowns in the earth, their roots aimlessly in the air. The crowns formed roots and branches sprouted from the roots. The tree had turned itself upside down. Around 1980, Buisman became fascinated by a special form in nature: phyllotaxis. It is the botanical term for the grouping of leaves around a stem. Celery is a fine example of spiral phyllotaxis. His fascination with this variation was mainly due to the symbolic value of the spiral, which according to Buisman represents the continuous process of life and death and of growth and decay. He uses the motif in his sculptures made of wood, bronze, concrete and cast iron.

For the Sculpture Gallery he made 'Phyllotaxis The Hague'. The sculpture in the city centre is made up of a seemingly unstable pile of tree trunks, each with a slanted top. They seem to form a stem, enlarged and abstracted. With his pedestal sculpture, Buisman shows that each new shoot wants to move away from the centre and upwards, to the top. And that nature itself - according to the phyllotaxis principle - seeks its ultimate balance.