Eric Klemm: Forever Green

Sep 09 2011 to Oct 01 2011

In this latest work, Eric Klemm, an internationally known photographer who has won numerous awards and whose work can be found in a number of public collections including the National Portrait Gallery, London, England; The Portland Art Museum, Oregon, USA; and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria among others, tackles the relationship between plant life and the urban setting.

As Eva Seidner, noted writer and collector, puts it “The irrepressibility of green and growing things is a theme which Eric Klemm has successfully explored before, most recently in Metamorphosis (2005), his series of virtuoso images of cars abandoned in the forests of British Columbia and transmuted by the encroaching vegetation into new life forms, creatures that seem almost sentient amid the ferns and undergrowth.

The present series, Forever Green, further develops the theme of transformation while broadening the subject matter. We are presented with images of humans’ ineffectual and therefore temporary impositions on the natural world: bushes ruthlessly clipped into lopsided marshmallows, sad clusters of poplars struggling in the lee of concrete buildings, trees strangled or bifurcated by wires-- all continuing somehow to grow their way out of their confinements. As in the previous series, the sense of the grotesque or uncanny is pervasive.”