The last forest

THE LAST FOREST
Parque Tecnológico de la salud, Granada, Spain
12 April – 30 June 2018
solo exhibition

Exhibition catalogue

The last forest. Project description

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ABOUT THE PROJECT:

Today we are conditioned by globalization, consumerism and new technologies and this situation has drastically changed our perception of time and space. Time seems to run faster and faster and it seems to leave us always without time. According to Byung-Chul Han this feeling we owe to the atomization of time. As the author says, today we experience a discontinuity of time, which appears as peaks of current events, unique points of the present that are not connected to each other, peaks that do not create a continuous unity.

This concept resembles the so-called liquid life of Zygmunt Bauman, where the philosopher describes the world ruled by interruption, incoherence and rupture. According to Bauman, our time line has no arrow, that means, that time is not going to any direction and therefore has no conclusion and does not structure our lives. Han describes a world where each moment is equal to the other and there is no ending that would give a meaning to our life. When each moment is equal to the other, neither is important or decisive. None is final. When it is no longer possible to determine what matters, everything loses importance.

When we enter to the Forest of Bialowieza, one of the last primeval forests in Europe located on the border between Poland and Belarus, it seems that time has stopped. It is a real kingdom of nature that dictates its own rhythm in which life and death are part of the same process. At first glance we are shocked by the present chaos in the jungle, but after a moment we realize that it is really a natural order, and everything occupies its proper place. In the jungle everything happens in a time parallel to ours. The time there has an order that structures life in the forest and endows each event with meaning. Life in the jungle is guided by the four seasons of the year where each event has its appropriate moment and requires specific time. There the current acceleration of the world does not make any sense.

The now in the jungle is not built by the peaks of the present, it is continuous, eternal. That eternity that invites the profound contemplation.

The installation in PTS Health Technology Park in Granada mix drawing with architecture offering a place of meditation and reflection. The exhibition is divided in three rooms. In the first room there is a projection of a photography that shows the entrance to the forest. In the second room we encounter the installation of drawing on continues paper of the jungle panoramic view. While in the third room we find the installation made with pencil on black paint on the wall inspired by tree barks. In all rooms there is a sitting place that allows the viewer quiet contemplation.