Exhibition Review: Richard Mosse "Tristes Tropiques"
Subterranean Fire, Pantanal, 2020
archival pigment print, 59 x 91 inches (print); Edition 1 of 5, with 2 APs, Inventory #RIM20.006.1, Location: Not produced
© Richard Mosse. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Written by: George Russell
Tristes Tropiques, Richard Mosse’s new exhibition at the Jack Shainman Gallery, departs from his previous works in many ways—particularly, his choice of vibrant, eye catching color stands in marked contrast to his last series, of black and white thermal images. This exhibition harkens back to his expectation-defying photos of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which the greens of foliage and military fatigues are transmogrified into shades of fluorescent bubblegum pink. In Tristes Tropiques Mosse addresses another pressing geo-political issue with the same polychrome approach.
Intensive Cattle Feedlot, Rondônia, 2020
archival pigment print, 63 x 59 inches (print); Edition 2 of 5, with 2 APs, Inventory #RIM20.002.2, Location: Not produced
© Richard Mosse. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Tristes Tropiques is a survey of what the artist calls “environmental crimes” in the Brazilian Amazon—aerial photos, taken from drones, of slash and burn deforestation, pollution, mining, and other grave threats to the vast but fragile ecosystem of the world’s largest rainforest. Mosse takes advantage of imaging technologies previously used by ecologists and extraction capitalists alike to track environmental damage and assess potential resources. Multispectral imaging captures specific bands of light, including ultraviolet and infrared—used to intense effect both here and in Mosse’s Democratic Republic of the Congo series. By isolating and layering these images, Mosse creates multicolor patchwork maps showing phenomena unnoticeable or invisible to the naked eye—underground fires moving through root networks, illegal mining operations, and the small, sustainable footprint of an indigenous community’s traditional practices.
Burnt Forest, Amazonas, 2020
archival pigment print, 47 1/2 x 59 inches (print); Edition 1 of 5, with 2 APs, Inventory #RIM20.013.1, Location: Not produced
© Richard Mosse. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Ver-o-Peso Açaí and Fish Market, Para, 2020
archival pigment print, 64 x 59 inches (print); Edition 1 of 5, with 2 APs, Inventory #RIM20.019.1, Location: Not produced
© Richard Mosse. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Similar in some ways to Mosse’s earlier work, Tristes Tropiques subverts expectations of what conflict looks like. The aerial maps have a clinical aesthetic matching the precise, methodical, tech-heavy way they were produced. If his pink-hued infrared shots of soldiers and refugees invite the viewer to see through the soldier’s-eye-view of night-vision goggles, then these surreal images offer themselves up for expert analysis like the computer-tinted images of an electron microscope or a deep-space telescope. The surreal, saturated photographs are alternately microchips, exotic lichens, and petrie dishes brimming with penicillin spores amidst strange and sinister strep strains.
Aldeia Enawenê-nawê, Mato Grosso, 2020
archival pigment print, 105 x 59 inches (print); Edition 1 of 5, with 2 APs, Inventory #RIM20.008.1, Location: Not produced
© Richard Mosse. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Looking at each piece there’s a moment where, in a reveal like a Magic Eye coming into focus, an element on the ground (a house, a crossroads, a truck) throws the whole surreal composition into perspective and proportion—visions of Electric Ladyland are transformed into a sobering plate from an atlas of ecocide. It can be hard to square the lush beauty of Mosse’s kaleidoscopic maps with the stark realities that they represent. He injects iodine contrast into the ailing body of the earth and the damage that it highlights is devastating. Even as they acknowledge a grim diagnosis, though, these photographs reveal things previously unseen on the Earth and insist that, though afflicted, it is still alive and able to heal.
Burnt Pantanal I, 2020
archival pigment print, 67 x 59 inches (print); Edition 1 of 5, with 2 APs, Inventory #RIM20.003.1, Location: Not produced
© Richard Mosse. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
