Israel Ariño, TERRA INCOGNITA, 2012

Terra Incognita comes out of the discovery of a land, explored by one who wants to be an observer and be observed at the same time. It is a voyage into the unknown, towards a space far away from the commonplace, which questions us and seems to be our accomplice yet keeps us at a distance. It plots a symbolic map in which the memory and the magic of the place appear. In this game with nature, the personal, subjective gaze reveals strange, dreamlike, almost impossible images.

That visible, yet impalpable world allows us the bargain: the real and the imaginary tending to seduce each other, but by no means exhausting what we have seen, in exchange for our inability to retain all that has happened in the landscape.

Terra Incognita turns experiences into images, which are like a revelation born out of sensations in order to tempt us to keep looking at transitory landscapes, changing and intangible but no less real for that, because they are there, on the outside, even though they only briefly come to life in our gaze.

The series Terra Incognita was made during an artist’s residency in the Aparté, lieu d’art contemporain in Brittany.