Ryth Kesselring

Abstractions géographiques is a series of in situ installations that infiltrate a site, metamorphose the landscape, and create an illusion that subtly integrates into the environment. These interventions reflect on the optimization of natural resources, which distorts ecosystems in an invasive, even colonial, way. Using anamorphosis, these works warp with the slightest movement of the viewer, creating a tension between controlling perspective and the fragile balance of the natural ecosystem that hosts the installation. Made of linen threads installed like a weaving warp across the space, the intervention evokes the complex and fragile communication network that forms the symbiosis of the forest in which they are embedded. The illusion gently blends into the landscape and alters it in a Cartesian way.

The visual is amplified by applying a weather-vulnerable coating to tree trunks, made from slaked lime and clay. This ephemeral coating underscores the fragility and the absurd, chimerical nature of current policies that advocate controlling the environment. This series of works reflects on land management within today’s neoliberal system; the arrogance of control driven by land-management policies that transform natural ecosystems in a pronounced way.