Garden
(Rotterdam / Wilhelminakade 137)
Kim Boske is constantly looking for new ways of representing nature and the landscape and how we relate to both. She lots go of the individual perspective and gathers various standpoints in one single image, causing a new, layered reality to arise. Her soundless video Garden beautifully illustrates what a ‘composed’ work is. The presented landscape is stylized and perfected to such a degree that it seems computergenerated. We see gardeners in identical garb who are painstakingly pruning. They seem to be multiplied by a computer program. To the artist this scene represents an ‘earlier photo work brought to life’. Boske opted for a fixed vantage point and carefully framed and recorded the work of the gardeners. There was not need to manipulate the image further, the staging was done ‘live’. The Japanese garden in Garden hints at the control we are trying to exercise onto the landscape, but equally to the respect that is shown to nature in that it is cherished and cared for. Noteworthy is that in real life the Japanese garden can only be observed from behind a glass pane, i.e. from one vantage point only. The observer’s ‘vantage point’ is always identical to that of the head of the pruning team.