From the shimmering sea that "knows all the grays" to the graphic shadows of beech trees in mist and snow, Loredana Nemes transfigures a legendary land with breathtaking precision. Between nostalgia and dreaminess, we plunge into this black-and-white enchantment.

Crowned by a forest of hundred-year-old beech trees, chalk cliffs rise up out of the sea. We're in Sassnitz on the island of Rügen, the largest in the Baltic Sea, close to Jasmund National Park (part of UNESCO's World Forest Heritage). This is where Loredana Nemes takes us, following in the footsteps of Caspar David Friedrich and so many other Romantic painters who came here in search of their motifs. A place where " there 's no need to flee ", for this expatriate who, at the age of 14, left her native Romania with her parents to settle in Germany.

Where this uprooted woman can put down new roots: " So my roots stretch out far, like beech trees, all the way to the Carpathians. They wind through the stratified mountains to return to the trunk of my parents ", writes the photographer, who is also a poet.

It wasn't until 2019 that the artist, born in 1972, made her way to the island of Rügen. Falling under the spell of this overhanging land, where she was dazzled to discover the forest of Jasmund Park, reminiscent of the Transylvanian forests of her childhood, she decided to devote herself to these " ashen trees that know me, for I come from the Carpathians, from a neglected land of beech trees ". At the same time, she abandoned portraiture and genre scenes, to which she had devoted herself for twenty years 1. Grey Trees and Celestial Sea is the title of the photographic series she began then and continues today.

FLICKER AND GRAPHIC EFFECTS

Born of a genuine fascination for this " sea at the edge of the forest [which] reflects light and knows all the greys ", the cycle (presented concurrently in Milan and Chaumont-sur-Loire) skilfully deploys, season after season, the interweaving of the two motifs: trees and horizon, disregarding the cliffs whose jagged silhouettes we know from Caspar David Friedrich 's famous 1818 painting (The Chalk Cliffs on the Island of Rügen).

Moving away from the picturesque to focus on the interplay of light and shadow, Loredana Nemes shows here a certain inclination towards abstraction, already at work in her Beyond series shot through opaque glass, or the totally blurred, brightly colored series inspired by the terrorist attacks perpetrated with trucks in Nice, Berlin and Stockholm.

" GRAY IS MY FAVORITE COLOR. THE REDUCTION OF THE WORLD TO MANY GRAYS IS THE FIRST STEP TOWARD ABSTRACTION, A DETACHMENT FROM REALITY ON THE PATH TO THE IMAGE. "

A veritable abstract painting reduced to two horizontal bands featuring all the gradations of black and gray, one of his Mer céleste (no. 28) admirably conveys the limpidity of the air and the depth of the sea. It's also easy to understand the artist's sense of calm in this silent place. Sometimes invisible, playing hide-and-seek with the branches of the trees, the sea always lets its presence be felt, wafting its perfume of eternity, while the snow-covered or budding trees imperturbably mark the passage of time.

With the same meticulous attention to detail as she renders the shimmering sea and foliage, the photographer creates a palette of grays of fascinating richness and precision, translating the color of the leaves as the seasons change, while on the vast expanses of water, the light streaming through the clouds seems almost palpable...

Beyond the " pictorial " motif, the sea serves here as a "reflector of sunlight", while the shadows and reflections of the trunks create a mesmerizing " graphic effect 2 ".

1 Behind the Curtain, 2003; Romanian Faces, 2003-2004; Under Ground, 2005-2008; Beyond, 2010; The Presentation, 2014.
2 Anne Kotzan, Schwarzweiss magazin, November 2022.

"GRAUBAUM UND HIMMELMEER" [GRAY TREES AND CELESTIAL SEA]
PODBIELSKI CONTEMPORARY VIA VINCENZO MONTI, 12, MILAN (ITALY)
UNTIL FEBRUARY 10, 2024
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CHAUMONT-PHOTO-SUR-LOIRE - DOMAINE DE CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE
UNTIL FEBRUARY 25, 2024
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