Press Release

In autumn 2018, ISELP hosts A FOREST. The exposition brings together around ten artists mobilised directly or indirectly by the plant world and its methods of organisation in complex systems, called ecosystems.

Trees, plants, moss, lichens: all so much more sophisticated than we thought for a long time, these beings have developed many growth, reproduction, survival and multiplication strategies. These strategies involve abilities to interact that are capable of being assimilated into specific forms of language.

 

 

International Archives 2nd half of 2018

A FOREST, collective exhibition

ISELP, Brussells (Belgium)

21.09 - 15.12.2018

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Exhibition September 21, December 15, 2018. ISELP - Bd de Waterloo, 31 B-1000 Brussels (Belgium). T. +32(0)2/504 80 70. Hours: Tuesday / Saturday 11am: 6PM. Free entry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Awareness of the extent of the sophistication of plant beings (of living organisms more generally) is today helping to overturn the definition of the boundaries between humans and non-humans, nature and culture, animate and inanimate. This update in the knowledge and representation of plants is found in various forms in the work of the artists brought together in A FOREST.

Maria Thereza Alves leads a study on the linguistic evolution of inhabitants on Rénion Island who fled slavery to hide in the forest. Danièle Aron’s etchings combine faces and plants in an intuitive thought process, while Félicia Atkinson summons the forest in the metaphorical form of a combination of signs, symbols and textures. Céile Beau evokes – through sculptures or installations – the first states of the existence of plants while Lise Duclaux conducts a more methodical, graphic investigation on the lives of plants. Diana Duplakova’s pictures stem from an oneiric drift in the wooded spaces of her town and Paul Duvigneaud’s records give us access to ‘Maximillian tapestries’, life-size depictions of a forest in the centre of Belgium.

 

 

 Various Artists, 3 Bomen, Drown.ke, pae and io, 2015. Vidéo, diptyque, 6’54”. © Various Artists

© ArtCatalyse International / Marika Prévosto 2018. All Rights Reserved

Cristina Iglesias, Corredor Suspendido I, 2006 Hierro dulce trenzado, cables de acero y sombra 925 x 795 cm. Vue de l’installation au Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2013. Photo: Attilio Maranzano

Pep Vidal, Who Wants to Be an Impatient Gardener?, vue d’atelier, projet en cours depuis 2016. © Pep Vidal. Courtesy LMNO

Olga Kisseleva, on the other hand, translates the language of trees with the support of a botany laboratory at the Sorbonne. In the context of a residency at ISELP, Deborah Levy & Antoine Wang study ‘Moly’, the mysterious flowering plant mentioned in The Odyssey. Nobody knows the exact botanic identity to the extent that literature has attributed at least 30 possible species to it.

Yogan Muller’s photographs identify the limits marking the outline of the Landes forest, ‘Le Forê Domaniale du Flamand’. Various Artists create an aquatic machine producing a crystallising effect on the plants. Pep Vidal installs every last flower from a Barcelona florist to observe their mechanisms of existence.

Resembling a temporary biotope, these works call into question concepts, forms and mediums that form the basis for our relationship to plants. ISELP is offering a programme of 12 conferences and meetings led by artists, art historians and environmental professionals. They delve deeper into the dimensions of A FOREST, such as ecofeminism, the notion of the ecosystem, the lives of plants.