Jon Cazenave, when nature creates its own image

Jon Cazenave (San Sebastián, 1978) says that the first impression he felt upon arriving at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station was one of anguish, overwhelmed by the blocks of ice and snow that make up the wild lands of Lapland.

There, under the profile of Saana Hill, one of the highest peaks in Finland, in a territory that serves as a border for three nations, he spent sixteen days, practically in solitude.

In those days, winter was coming to an end and spring brought with it the thaw and endless hours of light.

Invited to participate in Ars Bioarctica, an artistic and scientific research program, the photographer set out to develop new ways of representing the landscape with a clear purpose in his mind: not to impose his gaze and allow nature to express itself.

Image belonging to the series 'Ice, Soil, Light and Silence' (2023). Jon Cazenave

Image belonging to the series 'Ice, Soil, Light and Silence' (2023). Jon Cazenave

Image belonging to the series 'Ice, Soil, Light and Silence' (2023). Jon Cazenave

Image belonging to the series 'Ice, Soil, Light and Silence' (2023). Jon Cazenave

Image belonging to the series 'Ice, Soil, Light and Silence' (2023). Jon Cazenave

Image belonging to the series 'Ice, Soil, Light and Silence' (2023). Jon Cazenave

Image belonging to the series 'Ice, Soil, Light and Silence' (2023). Jon Cazenave

Image belonging to the series 'Ice, Soil, Light and Silence' (2023). Jon Cazenave

The result of those intense days has been a powerful set of organic and abstract images

,

where the force of the natural world beats:

Ice, Soil, Light and Silence

.

It is exhibited at the Ibero-American Institute of Finland in Madrid, curated by Sandra Maunac.

A praise to the natural and primal world that the author once again uses to delve into the idea of ​​the landscape as a constructed reality, and explore the relationship between culture and nature, while giving rise to new creative approaches that will allow him to explore more. beyond the limits of traditional photography, opening paths to new artistic possibilities.

“There are still places where it is necessary to arrive slowly,” says Cazenave, during a telephone conversation.

Surrounded by silence, the author little by little traveled through that snowy territory.

“In the face of immensity and that romantic thing of the sublime, working becomes a defense mechanism,” he warns.

Without being bound to any schedule and surrendered to the whim of the brilliant light that flooded the landscape, the artist set out to develop

in situ

a new series that transcended the black and white that usually characterizes his work, and acquired a more material point, making use of of plant and mineral elements.

Thus, he climbed the Saana, the Pikku Malla and crossed Lake Kilpisjärvi, while the thaw continued and the stones, moss and lichens and other plants were visible again, freed from the winter white mantle that covers the subarctic region.

Image belonging to the series 'Ice, Soil, Light and Silence' (2023). Jon Cazenave

He then began to make cyanotypes on Japanese paper (Washi) using rocks.

It would take her a few days to come up with a gesture, so obvious in that place, such as placing ice on the emulsified support.

So, while the ice melted under the sun, nature was creating its own image.

In his intention of not using the camera as such, “of trying not to look so much”, Cazenave returns to the origins of photography and will make use of primitive techniques, which will lead him to find those primitive, instinctive and uncultured images. that the author pursues.

Ephemeral pieces

Antityping, a photographic process that is based on emulsions made with plant extracts, will be another of the resources used.

Using some fruits that the author was finding, which he would later identify as

Arctostaphylos uva-ursi

, a species close to the common blueberry, he shaped pieces of reddish tones that integrate digital captures obtained from satellite images.

Shades that are doomed to disappear over time due to the instability of the developed image.

Ephemeral pieces in whose fragility the force of nature beats, where color does not manifest itself as a tool within the artist's reach, but as the expression of a material that in a certain way nullifies the photographer's authorship.

Image belonging to the series 'Ice, Soil, Light and Silence' (2023). Jon Cazenave

The mountain that he observes daily from his cabin inspires a series of pieces that allude to the border lines that mark that lost territory.

Fictional separations drawn by man that also point out our distance from the natural world, and the need to control and submit to that uncontrollable force.

Screen prints composed of superpositions that incorporate digital satellite photographs, and where one can feel the texture of that pigment that comes from the territory itself, of those elements found by chance that determine new paths that at the same time remind us of our place in the world.

“Minimal parts of a set of organisms always in motion to which we should listen much more and that Jon's work, through a few simple notes, helps us perceive,” writes the curator.

Ice, Soil, Light and Silence

.

Jon Cazenave.

Ibero-American Institute of Finland.

Madrid.

Until February 29.

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