Zoo
Topiary is the practice of trimming, pruning, and training trees and other plants into ornamental shapes. "Zoo" is an ongoing photographic series of topiary sculptures formed into the shape of animals. The photographs have been taken all over the world, in India, Japan, Canada, England, Turkey, and other places. It's a twofold paradox: a sculpture represents a living being in a static form but is alive itself – it has to be nurtured, trimmed and controlled.
“Handprints and images of animals were the first art. As far as we know. We think of them as an attempt to control, as a magical ritual to overcome fear by mastering the form. The experience of beauty in the subsiding of fear. Perhaps. The reproduction of animals from plants is, of course, an intensified version of this: one controls the form of animal and plant, the animal and plant kingdom at the same time. I always look with my eye for the places where it doesn't work: Where the plant sheds its leaves and our cute attempt at control becomes bare, or where it simply outgrows us.” – Robin Detje
Archival Pigment Prints, framed,
62 × 42 cm, Edition of 3+2
2021 – ongoing
62 × 42 cm, Edition of 3+2
2021 – ongoing
