Natural Glitch n°16

The photographs of Thomas Cheneseau are both the snapshot of our gaze and that of our anthropocene society of a nature that has been domesticated by man. Nature is today totally artificial and as a hybrid landscape, it is now both a look and a mirror with the Machine. Because Natural Glitch offers us to reveal the human percentage of all mechanics facing the reproduction (or the programming) of reality: its margin of error. Because the degree of uncertainty, the glitch, the error, the grain of sand that Thomas Cheneseau breathes into the sumptuous landscapes of his Natural Glitch series, works less in the footsteps of Glitch artists than on that of the landscape painter, witness of a time when the natural – the spirit of nature – takes up arms, disguises its true nature for a counterattack of illusion. Like the monster, wildcat chameleon of the jungle of the movie “Predator” (John McTierman 1987), like the anamorphic secret of the Renaissance or of the paintings of Arcimboldo or of the Douanier Rousseau … the images of Cheneseau give us a new interpretation of what we thought we saw. The illusion, the utopia of a landscape to be reborn. Paradise expected of a predatory dystopia on the move.

(Jean-Jacques Gay, 2018)

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