Sylvain Lefebvre: Journeys into the Unseen Forest

This summer, the artist worked in his home in the South of France during its hottest conditions on record. Heatwaves and wildfires will be how this period will be remembered by the artist and by the people of his country. The conditions provoked the artist to journey into his imagination to explore an abundant forest as yet untouched by humans. This exhibition documents his journey. In the unseen forest, he discovers species of trees that have never been seen before. They are completely plausible species that may exist somewhere in the few corners of the world that have not yet been discovered. Perhaps they are trees of the future. The artist sees his creative process as mirroring the organic development of a tree. His paintings are not preconceived or carefully designed but are instead created through an organic, intuitive process of painting, erasing, pruning, covering and painting again until the work feels resolved. The artist explains: ‘I wanted to put myself in the place of a forest and its trees by asking myself the following question: How is it that when we look at nature, whatever form it takes, it always appears balanced, while the trees that make it up can grow in such unbalanced ways… twisted, diagonally or horizontally, struggling to find their way towards the light?’ In this visual narrative, complemented by Sylvain’s words, we are asked to consider nature’s history without humans. What it means for this organic balance to be attained without human manipulation and control. Lefebvre’s journey was not undertaken alone. Professor Charles Gulliver Watson leads this expedition, autocratically proclaiming the names of each tree as he sees it. The artist highlights his farcical authority over an environment that he does not know. Lefebvre’s role is that of William Hodge and Gaspard Duché de Vancy, who were artists who accompanied 19th-century explorers to ‘new worlds’. Their paintings documented what the explorers encountered, to share what they saw with their fellow Europeans. These paintings document an ideal vision that foreshadows a tragic history, characterised by control and subjugation. The parallels with the climate crisis are not lost on the artist. In imagining a forest untouched by humans, Lefebvre invites us to reflect on our impulse to discover, name and ultimately control the natural world.