“If the landscape corresponds to the expanse of nature that our gaze covers, is there a landscape outside of our comprehension? Faced with the strange presence of landscapes shaped entirely by humans, such as the Landes forest, can we still think of nature as something that escapes us and exceeds us? What is our relationship with our environment, which sometimes hinders our urban and economic development, but which has also always been an object of admiring contemplation?”
These are the questions that introduce the still work in progress work of Spanish artist Gonzalo Borondo at the Chartrons temple, an old Protestant temple built in 1835 and located in the Chartrons district of Bordeaux, France that was decommissioned in the 1970s.
Closed for almost 30 years, the temple will emerge again from its long sleep and current state of abandonment in order to serve as a n exhibition space for one of the most singular projects of the season; a vast immersive cosmology that invites the public to enter the universe imbued with notions of space and time.
Titled MERCI (French for thanks) the installation has been described as an immersive proposal that questions our complex and contradictory relationship with nature, through a displacement of botanical elements within the symbolic space of the Chartrons temple.
Using the psychological resonances of the temple the exhibition, the exhibition seeks to integrate the natural surrounding elements into Borondo’s work in an attempt to create a dialogue with and in the streets of Bordeaux. Windows, doors and plants will in this way serve as a whimsical connection between two worlds, the real and the poetic that emerge from sensations, stories and materials found in the surrounding area.
Through a series of juxtapositions of images using different media, perspective games and changes in spatial and temporal scales, the work not only researches the environment, forests and gardens of Bordeaux, studying decay, growth, re-growth, and the dialogue between architecture and the world that preceded us, but also seeks to create a path that is both sensory and metaphysical in order to prevent a single reading.
MERCI by Borondo will be finally unveiled on June 20 as part of the “Liberte! Bordeaux 2019” event in Bordeaux, France.
Author: Fran
Founder and editor of Urbanite. Street Art lover who after the finishing her MA thesis on the Mexican and Norwegian muralist movement in the 1920-50s, developed a fascination for street art and graffiti that eventually led to collaborations with different art blogs, including the creation of this one.
