A pioneer in the art of genetic manipulation, his work centres on the cross-breeding of plants and the treatment of the resulting flowers as works of art shown in galleries around the world.

He has cross-bred thousands of flowers, subverting the boundaries of the laws of evolution of the species as postulated by Darwin. For Gessert the law of natural selection is no longer the law of the strongest but the law of the most beautiful. To decide and choose which flower will be the one to survive and which will not, starting from presupposed aesthetics, is the basis of his work.

This brings us to question the validity of this transmutation of the values of strength for those of aesthetics in terms of simple survival.

With Origin he makes genealogical tables of the families of flowers he has been cross-breeding during all these years.

“Since the late 1970s I have been breeding plants, concentrating on the native irises of the Pacific Coast States of the United States. I have also bred other ornamentals, including bearded irises, streptocarpuses, and several different kinds of poppies. For the last twenty years I have exhibited live hybrids in galleries and museums, as well as documentation of my breeding projects.”

“I began as a painter. The transition to plant breeding was through painting on Japanese papers, which absorb water and pigments in unpredictable ways. I became fascinated by how ink spots grow on unprepared papers. Watching them grow, and helping them along, I no longer felt like a lone artist, but connected to creative energies that already reside in materials and in the world. From ink spots to plant breeding was only a small step. Plants, like ink spots, generate themselves. My job is to facilitate.”