Pendulum, 2022

Summer 2022 was one of the hottest on record for Europe. Heat waves and drought have caused major forest fires across the continent. In July, a forest burned just outside my hometown. The next day I went for a drive through the area to see the damage. There was still smoke coming out of what remained of trees and even the ground.
 
The photos capture the quiet after the devastation – like a suspended moment in between an event of intense violence and the process of renewal and growth that will follow.
 
As summers are becoming progressively wormer and forest fires more frequent, the photos became ominous for what lies ahead for humanity in the environmentally catastrophic future. The title Pendulum adds to the warning, echoing the ticking of the clock, suggesting that time that is running out.

For my solo exhibition at the Botanical Garden of the University of Zagreb, Croatia, commissioned by one of the country’s most important art institutions, the Art Pavilion Zagreb, the works were presented as outdoor installations. The photographs were printed on Duratrans and backlit by daylight, each housed in an elliptical wooden window frame.

The window frames came from the newly assigned offices of the Art Pavilion, where the institution temporarily relocated after its building was damaged in the 2020 earthquake. The windows in the temporary offices needed to be replaced, so I recovered five elliptical frames to house the five photographs from the series Pendulum. The images are mounted on sedimentary Kirmenjak stone — the very terrain they depict.