PICEA ABIES

 

The concept underlying the works 'Picea abies' (the scientific name for the Norway spruce) originated during my month-long residency at a plantation of old stone pines and cork oaks in Aracena, Spain (Arteventura). Surrounded by little more than plant structures, I was fascinated by the powerful expression emanating from the individual trees or plants. The trees on the hills were planted simultaneously, endure the same conditions, and are of the same species, yet there is a striking difference in growth habit between the trees, one that lends them a distinct character.

I compared this variation in growth habit of existing plants with computer-generated versions (Lindenmayer's L-system) of those same trees. Both plants proved indistinguishable from each other. The same expression emanates from both the plant generated by an artificial algorithm and its natural counterpart; the anthropomorphic way of looking makes no distinction.

In analogy with Oskar Schlemmer's ‘Triadic Ballet’ (1922), where he essentially tries to show the expression of the human body in its purity by abstracting it, I use the 3 colors he chose for his scenes—namely pink, yellow, and black—supplemented with the colors green, white, and blue from the spectrum of the ‘Intersections’ series to expose the expression of the branch structures. The titles of the abstracted works (Still uit een traag ballet / Still from a slow ballet) refer to the Triadic Ballet and ‘slow’ because these works are about plants, a slow form of movement compared to the movement of animals.

As subject matter, I decided not to use plants from my stay in Spain because, due to the hot and dry climate there, they have gnarled and rather picturesque, romantic forms and would thus produce overly scenic images. Shortly before my departure to Spain, I collected documentation of a small spruce population in the High Fens (Hoge Venen) (see upper left image); I was struck at the time by the strange growth habits of the uppermost branches. A spruce is very sober, unattractive, and inherently quite abstract compared to other trees. This group of young trees stands isolated in a meadow; the trees grow under the same conditions (temperature, moisture, and soil), possess the same genetic material, but each grows very individually again. Therein lies the interesting analogy with human populations.

For the images, I have only used the top 4 branches. From the existing population, I selected 11 trees, which are reproduced true to nature in each of the three versions.

I portray each of them separately in a naturalistic, recognizable style that references old painting techniques (the use of many glazes, pure colors, and a top varnish) to allow the anthropomorphic gaze to play a role again, and also quite unconsciously, through the old style, to read nature within an earlier context—a period in which nature was less organized and needed less protection, one that was somewhat closer to the pre-human era.