[Image: 020 by Gerco de Ruijter, 28' x 28', from Baumschule (2008-2010), courtesy of the artist].Dutch photographer Gerco de Ruijter recently got in touch with an extraordinary series of aerial photographs called Baumschule—some of which, he explains, were taken using a camera mounted on a fishing rod.
The series features '32 photographs of tree nurseries and grid forests in the Netherlands.'
[Image: 010 by Gerco de Ruijter, 28' x 28', from Baumschule (2008-2010), courtesy of the artist].
[Image: 005 by Gerco de Ruijter, 28' x 28', from Baumschule (2008-2010), courtesy of the artist].Returning to the original question—'How abstract can a landscape become while remaining a landscape?'—de Ruijter suggests that 'all of these objects arranged to form rows create a new form of abstraction, not because of the image’s emptiness but, to the contrary, because of the presence of so many 'things,' and their patterns and rhythms,' as if we could farm and harvest barcodes directly from the ground.
[Images: 007 and 032, all by Gerco de Ruijter, 28' x 28', from Baumschule (2008-2010), courtesy of the artist].
[Image: 002 by Gerco de Ruijter, 28' x 28', from Baumschule (2008-2010), courtesy of the artist].To take these photos, de Ruijter used both kite photography and even 'a long fishing rod.'
[Image: 001 by Gerco de Ruijter, 28' x 28', from Baumschule (2008-2010), courtesy of the artist].It is fascinating to see, though, when the arboreal vitality of the trees overcomes the grid they're planted in, to become fractally expressive of a different formal logic, one that exceeds any agricultural formatting of the landscape.
[Image: 028 by Gerco de Ruijter, 28' x 28', from Baumschule (2008-2010), courtesy of the artist].Gerco de Ruijter's Baumschule series is currently on display in its entirety at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, where it opened last week. It closes on April 10.
No comments:
Post a Comment