Exhibition Review: Des Paysages Longtemps
© Gérard Dalla Santa / Galerie Miranda
By Nicholas Rutolo
No one needs the reminder that the pandemic has forced us all inside. For a time, there wasn’t an opportunity to explore the world and nature because we were, or still are, afraid of what waits outside. Some of us can’t disregard the cities and suburbs from our own lives, it’s all we know.
Gérard Dalla Santa’s collection invites relaxing moments, and a momentary escape to nature. He not only reconnects us back with the planet in these times when we’re restricted from traveling, and most of our entertainment and time is put towards the technology in our hands and in our homes, but also gives us the opportunity to reflect on what it means to live on this planet. There are an incalculable number of living beings on this planet, we shouldn’t be so bogged down in a closed life. It’s natural for gems to stay hidden, but we don’t look for them anymore.
© Gérard Dalla Santa / Galerie Miranda
“Des Paysages Longtemps” translates to “The landscape for a long time”, identifying Santa’s consideration of not only the space, but the place in time these landscapes exist. Some feel like they’re forgotten to time; in a continuously evolving world, reminisces of the past and a world untouched by roads or buildings transport us to a time and state of being before the pandemic, and before industrialism. Santa’s work is a meditation of what it means to connect our humanity to nature. The work intersects the insulated lives of mankind, and the natural habitation of animals and nature.
© Gérard Dalla Santa / Galerie Miranda
Santa doesn’t photograph many animals but the few he does provide us with the idea that they’re out there, living and existing, feeding off of the land. Putting people in the picture is the same as putting animals in the frame, because after all, we were once animals and we’ve just learned to appreciate the world a little differently than we used to.
Santa made these images not as an evocation for nostalgia, but as a way of repairing a damaged world; looking to the past and witnessing its presence in the present helps us repair that future. We’re so disconnected from nature, but Santa’s work, elevating the world with unique points of view, helps us envision what we want the future to look like. We all want to preserve the natural beauty of things, but until we look at the world from a new perspective, and exist solely in those moments, we won’t be able to fix the future.
© Gérard Dalla Santa / Galerie Miranda
The work is based on a poem by the same name by Rainer Maria Rilke, and two lines stand out in relation; “it's so pure deliverance in the evening” illustrating Santa’s delight witnessing these natural havens at specific times that illuminate the beauty, and “between the distant arc and the too penetrating arrow: between the world too vague to seize the angel” which puts elegant words to the impact and weight nature has on us.
We should try to remember that when we stand in a city, or we’re locked up at home, there’s a world out there, pristine and beautiful that’s just waiting for us to witness it.
Gérard Dalla Santa has received several grants, had exhibitions in France and Europe, participants in many personal and group exhibitions, and is part of permanent collections at the Centre Pompidou, the Fonds d’Art Contemporain, the Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès, the Frac Aquitaine, and the Frac Midi-Pyrénées. You can see Des Passages Longtemps at Galerie Miranda in Pairs from now until October 30, 2020.
