ARTWORK DESCRIPTION
This still-shot video shows an in situ intervention in the Tabernas desert in southern Spain. For this ephemeral intervention, I wrote the phrase “The End” in anamorphosis and by digging furrows. The choice of this phrase, in this typeface and in this location, is at first sight a reference to the Western films for which this desert has been a recurrent setting. But my intention was not to stop at this obvious reference, but rather to create an image that would directly question the viewer, confronting him or her with an ambiguous situation in which several layers of interpretation are superimposed. First, there’s the choice of anamorphic drawing technique, as if to point out the limits of spatial representation and the “flatness” of the image. But there’s also the meaning of this phrase: the end, of course, but the end of what, really? Of a film? Of a world? Of our world? A phrase that inevitably resonates with the current state of ecological collapse, all the more so with this view of an arid, hostile desert. Also, made over the course of a day (from sunrise to sunset), this intervention says something about artistic work, physical labor where the body is put into play until it is exhausted. And then something else happens in this still-shot video. It’s not just a photograph. After approximately 1 minute, a figure enters the field and crosses the stage to the edge of the field. After a moment’s observation, he literally leaps into the void and disappears behind this end of the territory. This leap into the void may leave a burlesque impression, but it actually points to a certain absurdity in our relationship with the world.
BIOGRAPHY
Terence Pique was born in 1983 in the south of France. He lives in Ile-de-France and works between France and Spain. After studying cinema, he decided to go into photography, completing the Master Pro Photographie at the Université Paris VIII. At the end of his studies, he moved to Spain, where he took an interest in territories under pressure, such as the intensive greenhouse farming zone near Almeria; the border area around Gibraltar; and real estate speculation on the outskirts of Madrid. Following this rich experience, during which he took part in several artistic residencies, he returned to Ile-de-France to devote himself to teaching the visual arts, while continuing his artistic research and his travels to Spain.