PHOTO:Thomas Brummett -This Shimmering World

Time appears to stand still in the photos of Thomas Brummett. Like a penetrating glimpse into the essence of beauty, the images bow down before the perfection of nature. Based on this focus, they seem forever defiant of our fast-moving, often destructive human civilisation. Thomas Brummett does not only favour eternally relevant subject matters. He also opts for durable materials and precise techniques to ensure his work has the desired effect. Though they may appear historical, his photographs are the result of the most advanced reproduction techniques.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Karsten Greve Archive

Thomas Brummett in his solo exhibition “This Shimmering World”, unveils his series “RIVER” and “HALOS”. Like the rest of his œuvre, they are part of his vast project Rethinking the Natural, which he defines himself as “the project of a lifetime”. Immanence and meditative observations shape the genesis of his approach, which celebrates nature in all its forms and tackles the themes of the infinite and the divine. In his new series, light thus reigns supreme. Whether in the play of reflections of the ripple blurring the edges of reality or the radiance of a sunbeam in the lens, the photographer handles the infinite subtleties of natural phenomena with poetry. His penchant for Buddhism and Taoist philosophy taught him to pay full attention to the world around him. Like a gaze diving into the essence of beauty, he bows down in rapt contemplation to the imperfect perfection of nature. For Brummett, this attention is not restricted to the motif of fleeting details such as reflections on the water or the movements of rustling leaves that fleetingly part for light. He sees his work as a continuation of the history of natural sciences, which fascinated the world during the 19th century, and insists on the fact all images are actually meditations resulting from a long observation, making it possible to see and feel the world in its entirety. As he worked on his new series, Thomas Brummett returned to the codes of documentary photography, which aims to capture a situation or environment while maintaining an observational neutrality. The artist thus lends himself to a kind of meditation, similarly to Buddhist meditation, for example, which calls for a detached contemplation of the world and oneself. He is both committed to revealing nature and curious about photographic technique and science. Brummett masters the medium of photography to explore all the possibilities offered by working with light. The final image is thus a visualization of this process, sublimated by chromogenic printing, which makes some of the photos look like photographic drawings. The images in the “RIVER” series are based on almost abstract organic motifs. Parts of the forest are reflected in the aqueous undulations of “River #14” and “River #15”, but also in more abstract shots such as “River Diptych #3”. That forest is not, however, made up of living, lush vegetation. On the contrary, after attentive observation, the viewer can see trees bereft of their leaves with burnt trunks and emaciated silhouettes like skeletons. Thomas Brummett sees these reflections of light on the water as a portal to a parallel universe. Some works also pay tribute to the great masters of art, celebrating the waves of Katsushika Hokusai. “River #12 (For Soulages)” displays the same light effects as Pierre Soulages’ “Outrenoirs”. Dedicating works to the great masters who came before him is a way for the photographer to converse with history. He sees perpetuating the timeless dialogue between artists as a rite of passage. The “HALOS” series, on the other hand, raises the question and the meaning of the phenomenon of light, especially the spectrum we are not able to experience. The evanescent halos are physical manifestations of the immaterial, perceptible to the eye only for an instant. In some of Brummett’s photos, light appears secretively through the dense leaves as a celestial shape, as in “Halos #13 (Ascension)” and “Halos #12 (For the Fallen)”. Inversely, in Halos #9, the luminous radiance erases the landscape in an intense flash, leaving only optical effects and the colorful glows of the sunbeams. His photos seem to hold a great deal of mystery, allowing the viewer to dream and reflect on the essence of a work that transcends the traditional photographic observation of nature to create dreamlike images of an exceptional aesthetic quality, guiding the viewer to a state of full consciousness.

Photo: Thomas Brummett, River Triptych #1 (for Sesshu Toyo), 2021, Chromogenic Silver Halide Print, Ed. 1/3, 76,2 x 113 cm (30 x 44,5 in), signed in black oil pen on print border under mat and on back of removable mount, © Thomas Brummett, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Karsten Greve

Info: Galerie Karsten Greve, 5 rue Debelleyme, Paris, France, Duration: 6/11-30/12/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, https://galerie-karsten-greve.com