Jan Svenungsson

Bertrand, Anne. "Forest Sentinel",

in: Kunsträume in Norden, Galerie Asbaek/Kulturabteilung Bayer, 2002/2003


By chance I have seen him. I wandered below bright crowns of tall pines with slender trunks, crooked or straight; over some thick scrub, rustling foliage, a floor of fine grass, light green. In passing I saw him suddenly on the right-hand side, vertical, breaking through from below the forest roof with a warmer colour, red, against the almost white sky. The next time, I took a path that led me to a different place; he towered up again among the trees, but in a setting that made him immediately recognizable. From this point of view as opposed to the former one — frontal, object at the centre — other questions arise — the relationship between the details and the whole is now more disquieting, which is why I adopt it willingly. Mysterious axis, collage or illusion, object of amazement and doubt — what did I really see?

Anne Bertrand, Lyon, September 2002
(translation German to English by James Manley & Johan Sonne Mortensen)