Nature didn’t care, so I left.
DVD projection, 3 minutes, sound, Ernst and Young Collection
The piece is made with
a salt crystal garden solution and filmed time-lapse over 12 hours, compressed
into 3 minutes. The model originates from a kit and represents an oriental
style paradise landscape. A blue mountain sits in between two cherry trees
that blossom and dissolve.
Like the mythical Schlaraffenland (the land of milk and honey), this Utopia
is unwholesome and has no substance. It is fragile, floating and life could
not exist there. It’s promise dissolves with the blossom. The fakeness
of the model is gently superseded by the fascination of the real event, the
chemical reaction, the textures and the movement of the clouds. As a brief
vision of heavenly paradise it’s unconvincing, badly defined at the edges
- a poxy yet magical absurdity.