Casio Vasconcellos Journey through the Picturesque Landscapes of Brazil Series XXVII, 2015, Inkjet Printing on Cotton Paper
Francis Are, Poison Seed 2012
Zhang Enli, "Old Tree (5)" 2014 Oil on canvas
◎ Brother.J
Exhibition: Trees, Trees
Duration: 9 july – 10 October 2021
Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai
The world's oldest known forest fossils date back 385 million years, and plant biomass accounts for about 99% of total surface biomass. In contrast, the history of human beings on the earth is only 300,000 years, accounting for only 0.01% of the total biological volume of the earth. What comes to mind in the face of this species that actually occupies the core of Earth's life system? This is exactly the theme presented in the exhibition "Tree, Tree" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, which not only presents the magnificence and rich diversity of the tree itself, but also warns against the devastating consequences of the destruction caused by human deforestation by presenting more than 200 works from China, Latin America, India, Iran and Europe covering paintings, photographs, videos, installations, manuscripts, etc.
The exhibition, first exhibited in 2019 at the Fondation cartier de Arte de Paris, is titled "We, the Tree", a name that subtly puns on the theme of the exhibition, suggesting that the relationship between humans and trees is the starting point and anchor, and that through the observation of trees, it is also a reflection on human beings themselves.
The Foundation invited anthropologist Bruce Albert as one of its curators, bringing a very important perspective to the subject – the perspective of a scientific researcher. Bruce Albert himself has long been concerned with the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin, and at his call, a number of botanists and scientists have also joined the exhibition, and the "Tree, Tree" exhibition in Shanghai has added works by several Chinese artists. The work of artists with different perspectives and backgrounds brings a variety of channels of understanding to this exhibition.
Stepping into the exhibition hall, you can immediately feel two types of works, which are paintings and records from botanists, and native artistic representations of plants by indigenous Brazilian artists. The two are an objective depiction from Western researchers, and a sense of contrast from the daily observation of indigenous peoples, but this sense of contrast of the starting point meets and resembles in a very similar minimalist painting, and I shuttle through the exhibition hall in this wonderful feeling.
For example, the works of three indigenous artists from Yanomami look similar to children's picture books, but they are also quite documented because of their simple and clear depictions of plant forms. The Yanomami are indigenous tribes living in the northern Amazon, based on hunting, gathering and slash-and-burn farming, with a population of about 39,500 people, of which 28,000 live in the Brazilian Amazon region, consisting of 371 ethnic groups with their own territory, are veritable forest dwellers. But don't think that these artists still lived a primitive indigenous life, they were a new generation of people who were proficient in the Yanomami language, received a modern education, and had a deep cultural consciousness of the depiction of their surroundings, including plants and trees.
In contrast, francis Arrey, a French botanist and tropical forest expert who appears in the exhibition, has studied plants for more than 60 years, has made profound observations of trees in the Amazon Basin, and has left a large number of notes and sketches. The exhibition of a whole wall of works is proof, and it can be fully seen that Francis Arey's depiction of the fine and the grasp of color light and shade is not inferior to that of professional painters. In order to depict the canopy ecology of large trees, Francis Arey even invented a lightweight platform that can be mounted on the canopy, like a tent suspended from a tree, and this sturdy platform can be stood up to observe and record.
Trees, as the subject of artistic creation, can derive an unusually rich range of styles and worlds, to name a few:
Born in Iran in 1947, self-taught artist Muhammad Khan's "Untitled" series uses color techniques such as contrast and complementarity and similar graphic repetition methods to paint a natural world of lush vegetation; Brazilian photojournalist Casio Vasconcheros' "Journey through The Picturesque Landscape of Brazil" (2015-2019), which imitates the effect of printmaking with rough particles, bringing the audience back to a mysterious rainforest with low-definition pixels in one second; Brazilian artist Luis Zelbini combines the cityscape. The geometric patterns of lush plants and Brazilian folklore constitute abstract paintings with collage meaning... A thousand artists have a thousand styles, and works of art with trees as the theme can unfold indefinitely.
The creation for the purpose of research also has the quality and beauty of the work of art, which makes people marvel that the shape of the tree itself has enough aesthetic elements:
The most breathtaking are the works of Cesare Leonardi and Franka Stagi, both architects and designers. Born in Italy in the 1930s, they spent 20 years drawing 374 tree specimens in a 100:1 ratio using photographic negatives, summarizing the salient features of each tree, such as the shape of the trunk, the bifurcation of the branches, the size of the branches, and the layout of the leaves. In 1982, all of Leonardi and Stagi's research results were collected in the book "The Structure of Trees", which is still an important reference tool for tree knowledge and green space management. At the exhibition site, you can see the original works of these two architects, with the fine brushstrokes of the architects' drawings.
Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso, who published The Green Legend: The Amazing History and Science of Plant Intelligence, proposed the concept of "plant intelligence". There is a video of his conversation with the philosopher Emmanuel Coxia, and at the end of the film, he defends the paulownia tree produced by a paulownia seed left by the experiment, and picks a fruit and sprinkles the seed, and the narration and action of a botanist become the most poetic work in the whole exhibition.
Italian architect Stefano Boeri proposed the "Vertical Forest" project and implemented the design around the world. In the exhibition, he sits in the building of the "Vertical Forest" project in Milan and is interviewed about the inspiration of "The Baron in the Tree". He also served as the laboratory director of the "Future City Laboratory", a postdoctoral research project at Tongji University in Shanghai to predict the transformation and transformation of the world's metropolises, and many "vertical forest" projects are being implemented across China.
In this exhibition, artists use imagination to depict the world of trees, scientists summarize tree types and forms with rigorous observations, and architects combine sensibility and reason to provide possible solutions for the symbiosis between man and trees.
At the end of the exhibition, the newly added works of Chinese artists offer a different dimension: the tree here as a continuation of a cultural tradition reminds us of the gentleman's character symbolized by the Meilan bamboo chrysanthemum in ancient China, and the flowers and plants thus become the personality embodiment of the artist himself and the depicted object.
The artist Hu Liu's plant trees are hidden in the entire black picture she paints with pencil, and the importance of the silhouette disappears, but there is a sense of serene flow. Artist Zhang Enli's "Old Tree" series alludes to a certain state of man, as the artist said: "For me, the 'tree' is a portrait. ”
The exhibition ends with a video about forest fires, reminding us of the catastrophic consequences of this environmental change, and it seems that we humans should do something to avoid tragedy. Trees have always been the great elders and leading protagonists who guard life on earth, and the fate of trees is also the fate of people, and finding the connection with trees and nature is the meaning of this exhibition.
Courtesy photo/ Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai