CICA Museum, M Gallery
September 13, 2023
2023.09.13 – 17
Garden of Petrichor
Petr : the rock. Ichor : the blood, the fluid
Rock of the landscape,
Water of the sky comes,
Petrichor.
Petrichor is the scientific name given to the smell that rain leaves when it falls on the rock, a chemical fusion between the two elements gives the petrichor.
The rock lets life rest,
It absorbs shade and light,
Gives smell to the rain,
Petrichor.
These landscapes of mortuary appearance discover their lively interiority through their fusion with water. From then on, the rock, hard and dark, reveals a sweet smell, too long locked up.
Otherness or agreement?
Us, the rock,
She, the rain,
Petrichor.
Floors and walls scaled by water, gives the shapes and curves of life itself.
Water inhabits,
Chooses to melt death,
Or to reveal life.
By sound, it tinkles,
With its body, it perfumes,
Petrichor.
The smell must fill us.
Etymologically, Petrichor is a word that connects Petr, which means rock, and Ichor, which means blood, fluid. It is a fusion between these elements that brings out the meaning of this word: it evokes the smell that rain leaves after falling on the ground.
‘The Garden of Petrichor’ is a space that wish to connect, like rock to water, Man to landscape. The vertical concept of this natural phenomenon, that is water coming from the sky to touch the earth, and thus to make emerge from this fusion, a smell, appears to be just like the human spirit being in height, and which, crossing something, here a work of art, can return on earth, to an essentiality.
The spectator is invited to impregnate himself in his own way with the ‘Garden of Petrichor’, with what this agreement evokes to him. It’s a space of strolling, of wandering, one turns in circle, one occupies oneself, one lives with little. The narration stays personal, the artist only guides, brings us in a space at the edge between the common and the unknown. The images do not have an impressive character, they do not inspire us immediately with a strong emotion. You have to go to meet it, to immerse yourself in it, to get lost in it.
A step towards difficult landscapes is taken. From this effort, something like the Petrichor can emerge. In addition, a move from landscape to Nature. The idea of the landscape as an object of the gaze, without concerns for its underlying life, has to go. Feeling emotionally and/or playfully connecting to it, will intuitively give to us the inclination of respecting Nature, life itself.
Like this, we save Man from his mechanization, we extricate ourselves from the world of the useful, of the treatment of life as a resource, thus we find ourselves back deeply.
Here is the vocation of the walk propose in this ‘Garden of Petrichor’.
More simply than an alchemist, Alizée Bauer is an artist who uses photography to connect what can be seen outside with what is hidden inside ourselves. The camera then becomes the tool of transformation that allows her to reveal what is usually out of vision. As she walks around, she traces stories between her moods and the one of the environments that she crosses. While balancing between the interiority and the otherness, Alizée seeks to leave space for the viewer, thus, her works also balance between the intimate and the universal.