Strangely shaped creatures appear before us, in close-up, like specimens we might have encountered while crouching in the undergrowth. These creatures look familiar, and yet they soon escape any label we might impose on them. Are they microscopic details of what’s invisible to the naked eye, or samples from an entirely invented world? Given the questions they raise, we might also ask whether it is really we who are scrutinizing them, or if, on the contrary, they observe us.

Starting with photographs of real things—living plants, the texture of human skin—Renée Forest creates new images that come together through countless transpositions. Initially modelled three-dimensionally, they can then be printed, rephotographed, and transferred to film, or developed using traditional silver processes. This method of image transformation, or even metamorphosis, blurs the boundaries between analogue and digital, all the way through to the devices Forest chooses to visualize things that seem to reject material form. All the while, these things refuse to provide messages or answers, preferring the enigmas that emerge from their imaginary space.

VU’s residency-exhibition program gave Forest carte-blanche to develop a new project and to work with the centre’s team over the past year.

This exhibition is part of our program Dancing on the Measure of Time.