Alternatives Landscapes I & II by Benoit Paillé

“I was interested in the introduction of a man-made object in an outdoor setting, a luminous square, a human element that forms a relationship with nature and helps it to be reborn. From this I feel a kind of poetry blossoms, linked to the presence of this regular shape, like a recurrent canvas that symbolically references creation, the blank page, the empty space that needs to be inhabited.

The whole thing is done in an empirical way, and is guided by a formal research both obsessive and demanding. These alternative landscapes offer a new reading of the potential nature of landscape, of its conventional forms and its given beauty, simplicity or magnificence.

My approach towards landscape is to incorporate a poetical component that will trigger an emotional response linked to the form and the light. I wanted to create something that wasn’t really a landscape but rather something engineered, so as to move the viewer in a different way. I experimented with this method in many locations and this global perspective, the presence of a complete series of images, adds weight to this artificial form that lights up, subdues and transforms the original landscape.”

by Benoit Paillé.