Artist: Laurent Grasso

Sean Kelly presentss Artificialis, Laurent Grasso’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery. Grasso’s oeuvre blurs the line between temporalities, combining historical references and futuristic anticipations to create new, ambiguous, realities. The exhibition features the US premiere of Grasso’s films, ARTIFICIALIS and Orchid Island, along with two groups of new paintings related to each film. One of the series draws inspiration from the prominent 19th century American artist Frederic Edwin Church’s evocative landscape paintings of the Hudson River Valley. The exhibition confronts the rapid changes and existential challenges of our world where human cultural impact on nature is now indelible; it places viewers in a realm where distinguishing between the real and the artificial is questioned.

The film, ARTIFICIALIS originated from an invitation from the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris, France asking Grasso to produce a large-scale work in response to museum’s exhibition centered around Darwin’s legacy and the perception of nature. Both exhibitions were on view at the museum simultaneously in 2021, creating a dialogue between the historical and contemporary perspectives on exploration and our understanding of the natural world. Grasso’s film examines how 21st-century explorers document the world using contemporary tools, merging real and virtual worlds to envision the future of nature and exploration. Produced with advanced vision instruments like LIDAR scanners and hyperspectral cameras, ARTIFICIALIS generates images that blur reality, nature, and artifice. The film challenges the possibility of exploration in a hyperconnected world, mapped by satellites and compressed in space and time, questioning traditional notions of exoticism. Described by Grasso as a “film-machine,” it evolves like a code, drawing information from the world as a database to spotlight areas where nature has mutated due to human impact. Musician Warren Ellis composed the soundtrack while watching the film in real-time, adding a dynamic layer to the film, while graphic creations by M/M lend a futuristic dimension.

Part of Grasso’s process involves creating films that serve as the basis for other art forms, such as paintings and sculptures, resulting in a cohesive yet multifaceted oeuvre. New works from his Future Herbarium series, paintings of double-headed flowers, draw upon imagery from the film which are reproduced in oil and palladium leaf on wood. The mutations are transformations from a future that exists only in the artist’s imagination, creating “a sense of strangeness where beauty and anxiety intertwine,” states Grasso.

Orchid Island, 2023, examines the idealization of nature in art history juxtaposed with contemporary climate issues. Set against Taiwan’s seemingly pristine landscapes, the film introduces a mysterious, levitating black rectangle, which casts its shadow on the area over which it flies. The film questions Western representations of exotic, imaginary settings, oscillating between archive footage and futuristic projections. With this work Grasso seeks to “activate an altered state of consciousness similar to that of hypnosis.” The music, a haunting melody underlaid by the sibilant hum of a synthesizer, imbues the film with an eerie, dreamlike atmosphere, further contributing to its hypnotic effect.

The accompanying paintings, part of Grasso’s series Studies into the Past, incorporate natural or supernatural phenomena into apparently historical canvases, creating an uncanny feeling of déjà-vu. Inspired by one of the most widely recognized painters of the Hudson River school, Frederic Edwin Church, Grasso’s paintings closely recall his idyllic nineteenth-century landscape paintings. Church was significantly influenced by the Prussian explorer and scientist Alexander von Humboldt, whose seminal work Cosmos articulated the interconnectedness of science, the natural world, and spiritual concerns. Humboldt’s dedication to landscape painting and his belief in the artist’s role in scientifically portraying nature, deeply impacted Church. As Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution challenged Humboldt’s ideas of unity in the 1860s, Church’s paintings also responded to this paradigm shift. This historical context aligns with Grasso’s interest in the sciences and his artistic exploration. Grasso’s new Studies into the Past paintings continue his long-established exploration of time travel and the viewer’s perception of reality.

On Saturday, October 26 at 11am Sean Kelly will be in conversation with Laurent Grasso at the gallery, followed by a signing of Grasso’s new publication Time Travel. The book features a foreword by Laurence des Cars and texts by Denise Markonish and Arnauld Pierre. Time Travel delves into Grasso’s expansive oeuvre exploring science, natural phenomena, and contemporary mythologies, to present a visual journey of his avant-garde, conceptual work.