When Descartes put forward the idea that the body is only a vector for the soul, he allowed the development of modern Western thinking. The body became a tool for the mind, in the same way that what we call Nature became a tool for humanity. Culture, in its broadest sense, the way of life of a people, is today separate from Nature. This human engineered dichotomy between Culture and Nature is resolved in my collages by letting humanity burst into natural worlds, and animals and plants disturb human enterprises. Elements of the “natural world” and symbols of the “cultural” combine in unexpected and novel situations inspired by the surrealist movement, bridging the apparent divide. I highlight the absurdity of our current disconnection by intentionally misplacing manmade objects within the living world to catch their human creators by surprise.
Collage presents the opportunity to cut statues, buildings, roads out of ephemeral magazines and paste them back into the deserts, oceans and mountains of our origins, pictured in long lasting photography books. The fragility of the artistic medium – paper – resonates with our planet’s equilibrium, today out of balance. I distort reality by playing with perspective, orientation and scale, in a search for a renewed harmony in the natural world. This harmony is born from an a priori unstructured collection of pictures through which the artwork assembles itself serendipitously.
