Timur Si-Qin, ‘Last of the Wild and Free (Rhododendron calophytum)’, 2025
Presented by Albion Jeune
Presented by Albion Jeune
Timur Si-Qin, Last of the Wild and Free (Rhododendron calophytum), 2025
Presented by Albion Jeune
Last of the Wild and Free (Rhododendron calophytum) is a pre-emptive elegy – a monument to the forms of life that still exist in the wild, yet may not remain there for long. Though Rhododendron calophytum is not yet endangered, its presence in its native habitat is increasingly rare, and phenotypically distinct from its appearance in Western gardens. The wild version is taller, rangier, less ornamental – its character shaped by deep ecological entanglement rather than human husbandry.
This sculpture seeks to capture that untamed expression, preserving the plant not as a decorative object but as a wild being. In the context of darkness and shadows, it reflects a vanishing relationship between humans and the true wild – a slow forgetting of how things once looked, lived and felt outside the frame of cultivation.
About Timur Si-Qin
Timur Si-Qin (b.1984, Berlin; lives and works in Berlin) is interested in the evolution of culture, the dynamics of cognition and contemporary philosophy, weaving them together to create a new kind of environmental art. Taking form through diverse media, installations of 3D printed sculptures, light-boxes, websites, texts and virtual reality, Si-Qin’s work often challenges notions of the organic in relation to the synthetic, the natural to the cultural, the human to the non-human, and other dualisms at the heart of Western consciousness. Drawing from disparate disciplines like the anthropology of religion, marketing psychology and new materialist philosophy, Si-Qin considers spiritualities as cultural software, capable of deep behavioural and political intervention.
Recent solo exhibitions have been held at: Albion Jeune, London; Magician Space, Beijing; Société, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wintherthur; von ammon co., Washington DC; Spazio Maiocchi, Milan; and Art Basel Hong Kong. Group exhibitions include Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin; Kunsthalle Winterthur; Guandong Museum of Art, Guangzhou; Museum Frieder Burda, Baden Baden; The High Line, New York. In 2022, Si-Qin was commissioned by Meta to produce Sacred Footprint for the James A Farley Building, New York.
Frieze Sculpture is in The Regent’s Park, 17 September – 2 November 2025. No booking required, free to all.
Further Information
Frieze Sculpture runs alongside Frieze London and Frieze Masters, 15 – 19 October 2025.
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Main image: Timur Si-Qin, Last of the Wild and Free (Rhododendron calophytum), 2025. Courtesy: Frieze. Photography: Linda Nylind
