events

Still movements (...)

The exhibition "TREES" invites you to glimpse the secret life of trees, as captured through the benevolent eyes of a scientist and two artists.

Trees move by proliferation of matter. They move with the wind that shakes their branches and disseminates their seeds. Yet who are we to believe that all this is just happenstance? A tree’s structure is that of a  solid and steady being becoming increasingly light and flexible, thus turning the unpredictable force of the wind to its advantage. The tree also seduces insects and birds, sheltering them, welcoming them, so that in return they distribute its seeds. With its fruits, the tree attracts the greedy animal, who then propagates its seeds. And finally, the tree uses us : we human beings who believe so strongly that life is movement, are we not the first to transport grains and plants from one end of the planet to the other? The tree therefore lives motion differently: through the false stillness of its rootedness and in its infinite strategies of seduction.

The complementary perspectives of renowned botanist Francis Hallé, French sculptor Vincent Lajarige, and American painter Mark Alsterlind are an invitation to (re)discover through this exhibition the magic of trees.

These trees, which sometimes take hundreds of years to climb skyward, and which we human beings have the conceit to bring down in the space of a few minutes, because we have forgotten that human life itself begins in the depths of wombs, also seemingly still, inhabited by an invisible movement, the silent growth of precious matter.

Trees remind us of the wonder that should always be ours in the face of the stubborn miracle of life. Reminding us of such wonder, that is also what art is mainly about.

Séverine Gaspari
December 2015