Bendana | Pinel Art Contemporain is pleased to present Miguel Rothschild’s fourth solo exhibition “Premonition” at the gallery.
Premonition includes a selection of works from Rothschild’s two most recent series, dedicated to spirits and the apocalypse. Whereas the forests of Andalusia tipped in rising smoke from a controlled fire inspired works of mythic connotation, it was the turbulent clouds captured from the studio terrace in Berlin that stimulated the artist to conceive an apotheosis of the everyday sky. Rothschild enhances the documentary reality of his shots with notions of prophetic mystery. His refined method of burning the cotton paper support demonizes the landscape by proposing the disturbing aesthetics of real, three-dimensional consuming heat, orchestrated as fairy-like lace inspired by the foliage. Impressive cumulus clouds are heralding the catastrophe they will come to cause. Only the fluffy white areas of the clouds remain unspoiled, but they too could succumb to the temptation of becoming dangerous and self-destructive.
The photographs would seem to be burned by incandescent and yet invisible flames; our imagination turns the real burnings into the cause of the smoke on the photograph. A pattern of shadows that varies according to the ambient light adds to this illusion.
Here, the enchanting spectres of the forest, embodied in the immaterial but devastating smoke, escape the earth. There, the baroque, romantic, stormy skies are the good hosts who receive these demonic and seductive souls. These visions are ambiguous. Deceptive sublimity is awaiting the opportunity to strike.
The forest and the sky push us to think about our relationship with nature: a vital and spiritual nature. This romantic concept pays tribute to the supreme value of nature by identifying it as a central source of creativity and complicity with eternity while respecting the forces of the supernatural. This powerful intuition of our seductive environment beautifully evokes the extreme fragility of nature. Given Rothschild’s leitmotivs, a friendly wink at religious depictions of apparitions and ecstasies is permitted.
Helen Adkins
Berlin, July 2021
