Refuge. After the Fire
The eye lingers on the vertical motif of the trunks revealed by the fire and methodically documented by the artist. This linear motif is also suggested by the openwork cladding of the building’s façade, which is itself in conversation with the forms of the woodland. Within the space thus created, there emerges an ontology of the forest of this first half of the twenty-first century: a heterogeneous entity whose parts and counterparts interact in an ancient choreography whose notation often eludes us. Many species take refuge here, finding protection, food and a spirit of community. Previously occupied by First Peoples, this ecosystem already seems to be from another time, a past era, before our current massive loss of wild habitats, collapse of biodiversity and climate crisis. Like a kind of peau de chagrin, the steadily shrinking ecosystem of the woodland surrounding the Foundation and the forest areas Rutkauskas captures with his large-format camera nevertheless retain their refuge character and their extraordinary capacity of resurgence.
Curatorial project, Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment, St-Edmond-de-Grantham, Quebec, Canada, 2021.
ln the context of Andreas Rutkauskas's exhibition at the Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment (2021), the term refuge designates the forests-however human-altered they may now be-of both Western Canada and Eastern Canada, exemplified here by the woodland surrounding the Foundation. The juxtaposition of the large prints with the views offered by the glass pavilion out onto its surroundings produces an installation in counterpoint: in the images, the denuded landscape formed by the charred pines and, ail around, the trees that make up the woodland.
