LANDSCAPE: UNKNOWN, CONTEMPLATIVE, FULL OF MOVEMENT

Lithuanian magazine Nemunas (Issue 2023/04) Drawings by JorgedaCruz

Bernard Lassus – LANDSCAPE

The word "landscape" seems to refer to something always distant, viewed from a traveler’s perspective—always remote, barely accessible. But it’s also mysterious. Sometimes it’s a place one can approach, reach, and even physically touch—a stone path or a cherry tree reached by a ladder. As I deconstructed the landscape, I discovered not a single place but a sequence of places; the landscape disintegrated into a multitude of fragments, objects with hidden meanings that had to be studied. Each was as peculiar as the bark of a birch tree, a red tile roof, a river, or a cloud. But if the "depicted" landscape is not reliable, it separates from the "real" one and becomes a whole, an impeccable representation—an image constructed from a group of visible object fragments that were once part of it. We can try to include every imaginable object: a camouflaged soldier, a tiger blending into savanna grass, or even a hunter merging with the Alpine terrain. Landscape is then sensed not as a static "container" of objects but as a momentary whole—a sensory event where fragments of sound, scent, and sight collide with one’s inner being to form a temporary, subjective “truth.”

Translation editor: Dr. Eglė Bazaraite