De Einder / Horitzó

De Einder / Horitzó, Montségur, Frankrijk / De Dordtse Biesbosch,
The Netherlands, 2004 / 2005

The Horizon as an experience of open space and seclusion, as a limit and as infinity in space and time.

In 2004 eleven artists from Andorra, the Netherlands and Spain were working for two weeks in the surroundings of Montségur in the French Pyrenees. A year later the river landscape of the Biesbosch near Dordrecht in the Netherlands was the scenery of their activities.

Not only were the differences in the locations an important aspect but also the different environments of the participating artists. Where in the North the horizon is a stable point of orientation, this sight is rare in the mountains.
This contradiction was the starting-point of the project and determining for the character of the works.

The development of this idea is the project that I have carried out: la Mer retrouvée, 2004 and la Terre surélevée, 2005.

Restless earth: la mer retrouvée

“High over the planes of Italy, where nowadays flocks of births fly, once large schools of fishes swam.”

Leonardo da Vinci

Looking for resemblances between the two areas, the surroundings of Montségur and the Dordtse Biesbosch, I came across the image of the mountain Ararat, where since the Deluge Noah’s ark is supposed to be. From knowing that mountains arose from oceans as a result collisions of the continents the idea has come up.
A series of black-and-white photographs of the sea printed on clayslabs, put in a cut-out cavity in the mountains, as if they were tectonic plates: la mer retrouvée.

Restless earth: la terre surélevée

In the Dordtse Biesbosch I continued with the idea of the comparative horizon in time and place. The representation of geological layers pushed upwards by movements of the earth, on which the remains of primeval can be seen: la terre surélevée.

 The photographic images of layers represent bark, trunks, plants and are printed on three different types of clay.