Endgame – Orto Botanico Corsini Puerto Ercole
In the exhibition Endgame I am showing 2 bronze sculptures entitled “Cancale 1:1 #4” and “Cancale 1:1 #5 », as well as a photographic sculpture called “Souvenir 2021”. Both could be seen as documentary sculptures: the bronze works are replicas of parts of the Breton coast and the photograph was taken in a nature reserve in Ghent, the city where I live. The photographic image allows me to place what appears at first sight to be an ordinary cutout of a disordered Belgian landscape in the context of a Botanical Garden. This inclusion adds some less appealing species to their collection of carefully chosen Mediterranean plants. The picture is mainly defined by the presence of wild nettles, an invasive species that often supplants nature in Belgium because there is too much nitrogen in the air. Other more fragile species are disappearing and biodiversity is under threat. The monumental photographic image (2 x 3 meters) consists of two parts connected by hinges that give the image a spatial dimension and allow the light to fall on the work in two different ways. Due to the aluminum surface of the print, the colors from the environment are reflected in different ways on the image. This gesture of the folding the image in two gives it a structure, the overflowing cutout of nature becomes a land-scape. The work stands on a table making it seem like an altar in its
surroundings.