Feuillages rebelles, pelages revêches
by Tanguy Muller
This project can be seen this year at Circulation(s), which takes place from March 21 to May 17 in Paris, France. The full program is available here.
“I have been working for several years on a series that juxtaposes purebred dogs and topiaries (the term used for plants trimmed into geometric shapes). Dogs, like plants, are now often selected for aesthetic reasons.
They are subjected to trimming or grooming; these practices, which often resemble care, involve an attempt at control and a form of domination that are just as harmful to trees as they are to dogs. Rebellious fur is shaped into pom-poms, while vegetation that would normally grow in a chaotic way is forced into geometric forms.
These subjects, whose state lies at the intersection of the “natural” and the artificial, perfectly illustrate, in my view, the ambivalence of our relationship with living things—a kind of constant tug-of-war to maintain control over what is destined to elude us or disappear.”
