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8. THE VEGETAL (AND MINERAL) WORLD(S) OF BOB VERSCHUEREN
- State University of New York Press
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83 8 THE VEGETAL (AND MINERAL) WORLD(S) OF BOB VERSCHUEREN Belgian artist Bob Verschueren is not only a veteran of vegetal art; his works are likewise daring in their use of mineral matter. Nature silently and surreptitiously invades the meaning of art in his art. His ephemeral artworks do not seek to conquer or possess a space, but in creating scenarios that are site-, light-, and earth sensitive heighten our awareness of the actuality of a place. . . . Among his most ground-breaking works are the Wind Paintings from the 1970s and 1980s, which involved “painting the landscape” of empty and desolate places with crushed charcoal, iron oxide, chalk, terra verte, flour, yellow ochre, terre de Cassel, and burnt and natural umber. Each time, after a specific material was laid out in a linear motif on the land, Verschueren would wait for the wind, “a hand that sublimates the art to the materials” to distribute the variously colored pigments and materials over the land. The resulting works usually last only a few hours, whereupon the wind that created them likewise blows them away. Verschueren’s experiments in “painting” landscapes and landforms with light in the early 1980s at night have yielded results as unpredictable and beautiful as the Wind Paintings. He has said that the monumental and colossal aspect of land art is lost in photographs that bear witness to such art projects. Verschueren’s vegetal installations play on and with ephemeral materials such as nettle and water lily leaves, sand, tree branches, moss, lettuce, twigs, stones, fire, even potato peels, and the list goes on. . . . Bob Verschueren has explored the sounds of plants at the Banff Center for the Arts and has exhibited his installations and color photographs extensively in Europe, as well as in North America and Japan. Verschueren’s vegetal aesthetic invokes a phenomenological approach to artmaking. Each design applies natural elements to establish a relation to the specific architecture and landscape of a site—be it indoors, out in the land, or in the city—but the process remains accidental. JG When people talk about art and nature, they often avoid the question of our strong dependence on nature, the fact that everything comes from nature. The Vegetal (and Mineral) World(s) of Bob Verschueren 84 BV This dependence demands a certain kind of modesty, and this is what seems to irritate a lot of people. Moreover, in the West there is also a somewhat tense relation based on Judeo-Christian values that suggest nature has been created to serve man, that man can do anything he wants. This sets up a kind of barrier in our understanding. The division between man and nature still persists, and from many perspectives seems absurd. JG In Japan, the notion of the garden is strongly rooted in their tradition. It embodies a kind of harmony between man and nature, which is a source of wisdom. In looking at your work, we see a constant preoccupation with the integration of environmental elements—light, matter, and so on. When you began creating your first environmental works, in the eighties, the integration of these nature-based elements was definitely quite revolutionary, even shocking for a lot of people. BV People must first be receptive and, initially, some were probably not ready to accept this kind of proposition. One has to admit that ways of thinking evolve very slowly and that there is some resistance to new ideas, as, for example, the notion that “vegetable” art can only exist in the outdoors. Another important aspect to consider is that most people still maintain a quite romantic relationship to nature. And yet, nature is not only “marvelous.” There exist other realities, like AIDS, a disease that was not created by man but comes from nature. It is this romantic and somewhat absurd perspective that continually repeats the Judeo-Christian problematic whereby nature exists uniquely so humanity can dominate it. This point of view completely avoids the fact that nature can also be very harmful, that it doesn’t just generate things that are beneficial. JG When we look at a billboard in a city or in the country, what spontaneously comes to mind is the romantic landscapes of Turner or Constable. These billboards always suggest one single message and avoid the more complex notion that the image, in fact, surpasses reality, and is never as simple as initially seems. What is incredible in a system based on overproduction is that...