Fuera(de)forma
Fuera(de)forma is a group exhibition showed the projects developed by artists Victor Gonçalves (Brazil), Josephine Lau Jessen (Denmark), Patricio Tejedo (Mexico) and Lena Wurz (Germany) in the framework of Nectar Artist-in-Residence Program (2022). In collaboration with Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture and within the context of the emerging art festival Art Nou Primera Visión.
Fuera(de)forma – Meaning ‘out of form’ invites us to explore, play, question and reconsider the path, the materials and the values of the new era. The projects by the four artists are based on their cultural and creative identities and personal motivations, which interconnect with each other and draw inspiration from Nectar’s environment. In Fuera(de)forma, the artists tell stories and evoke questions about ecology and sustainability, about the value system and human consciousness and about the value of the soil/earth in our current and future time.
Josephine Lau Jessen focuses into human alienation and non-human beings from our environment and their cycle patterns through her analogue photographs and film. Observing patterns and organisms in the mountain environments of Nectar, Josephine Jessen approaches and connects with nature to re-value and portray it, as a result of her concern for the current situation that we are facing due to the effect of human beings on nature, in this era’s crisis of care.
In her body of works, Josephine Lau Jessen asks herself – what is the balance between observing and interacting? And how are we humans related to the natural cyclic patterns? With the aim of inviting us to engage and explore new ways of seeing, sensing and being in our natural world.
The film Be-coming investigates the living organisms of the mountains of Vilanova de Sau accompanied by music and by a premeditated mechanized voice in off that ironically relates to the images of the film and guides the audience through the artist’s journey and reflections.
Be-coming won a prize for Best Eco Work at the international film festival The Sea of Art Festival in Stavanger, Norway in 2023.
Through the series of four photographs (see below) titled
how would it sound if silence starts to speak? – The artist speaks of the human-nature dichotomy and a possible new approach. The work highlights the importance of nature and the human relationship with natural cycles while ironizing about the moral boundaries between observation and human intervention in nature. Through her video work, analogue photographs and installation, she invites people to engage and explore new ways of seeing.
With the installation Displacement, Jessen brings a part of the forest – a set of pine cones - into the exhibition space, wondering what value they have when exhibited in an art space, and remarking that in every pinecone there are the seeds for a new forest, therefore nature is sustainable if we, humans, don’t interfere in a bad way.
Text by Olga Surreda
