NATURE IN PLAY
NATURE IN PLAY
Botto, Breuning, Bundurakis, Christto & Andrew, della Valle, Dorf, Kannisto, Marzorati, Pertoldeo, Signorini, Tilo & Toni
7 March - 10 July 2020
Nature in Play is a collective exhibition opening at Metronom which exhibits works by artists who reflect on possible ways of representing nature and landscape using photography.
Charming and playful, the works highlight a renewed impulse to use photography to observe nature, with combinations of references to pop culture, trends and 'pure' atmospheres. Free of the excessively picturesque, the photographic gaze returns to deal with natural beauty through original and thoughtful approaches.
Our daily experience is built from the continuous exchange with the appearances that surround us - familiar or unexpected - and these exchanges confirm our existence: in being observers, we are able to contemplate our being in the world. Our way of looking is individually unique, it changes according to who is observing, where and what is being observed: children intuitively experience different perceptions of reality as they ascend into and augment contexts totally different from the one they live in. This is called play.
Since the beginning of industrialisation, we have seen sentimental visions of nature persist, both moving and alluring, it has often been considered that our affective response to nature is functional. Furthermore, if what a community finds beautiful in nature depends on precise social roots, there appears to be constants that all cultures have found awe inspiring.
According to philosopher György Lukács, the natural landscape symbolically represents what has not been created by men and can be understood as that aspect of human interiority that has remained natural, or that at least, intends or aspires to return to the natural world. If this most natural element is where our "eye of beauty" resides, then our gaze is purified of any influence of mediation, cultural construct or social obligation.
These artists engage and experiment with the landscape in personal and distinctive ways which investigates the relationship between consciousness, nature and what may - or may not - be naturally beautiful.
