31 May 2024 South of Paris, this wooded massif, with its astonishing rocky heaps and twisted old oaks, feeds Noémie Goudal's fictional landscapes. The photographer and visual artist, an expert in paleoclimatology the geological wealth of the area.
As far as the eye can see, rocky chaos piles up and you don't know where to look. The forest de Fontainebleau, in the south of the Paris region, is still full of moist morning showers, but a light sun is already peeking through the foliage of the great oaks. Noémie Goudal climbs the Cavalière des Brigands trail des Brigands, one by one overcoming large stones on her way to the famous gorges d'Apremont. As she climbs, the photographer and visual artist crevices between the rocks, which rarely allow a human silhouette. It's as if the skin of these monumental rocks is fractured, chiselled like scales. Others are partly covered with moss.Not far away, young climbers are out climbing.
These rocks, planted in the midst of twisted oaks, some of which have taken root some of which have taken root directly on the rock. 25,000 hectares of forest: "Above all, they tell us a very long story Noémie Goudal, inspired by the area's geological past. Even more than the ancient trees, these sandstone rocks plunge us millions of years into the past.
Until about 30 million years ago, in the Oligocene epoch, there was a sea here.It had been lying at the heart of the aptly named Paris Basin for hundreds of millions of years. The rocks are the product of sand, pure sand, composed of 95% silica, found in the forest, a remnant of this so-called Stampian sea that eventually retreated. Later, under the impact of erosion caused by rain, bad weather and variations in the water table, the sand was gradually welded together in places, further shaping this confusing site.
This stony landscape brings Noémie Goudal back to the world of paleoclimatology, which is a key theme in her artistic work. To bring her visual creations, combining photos, videos and installations, the works of scientists and thinkers, and translates them into art. In order to artistically translate the Earth's deepest past, long before the appearance of man. She thus composes intense landscapes, sometimes lush and often un-located, that appeal to our collective memory. Our gaze wanders through these panoramas, filled with layers of visual collages or montages, some of them apparent, to give substance to an art of trompe-l'œil.
This is what his monographic exhibition "Inhale Exhale" is all about, at the FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, until June 16. "By immersing myself in the distant eras of landscape, I'm trying to reshape our relationship with time. Human beings don't see the movement of things and believe they are a fixed entity. As an artist, it's completely turned my mind upside down to work on the long time scale of climate. That's when you realise that you're part of a great cycle of a very large cycle and that we're only living in a micro-period on the scale of the Earth. It's also a way to stop anthropocentric landscapes. When we say we want to save the planet today, what does that mean?Above all, we want to save ourselves and our ecosystems," explains the finalist for the Marcel Duchamp 2024 Prize (which rewards artists), who is preparing to exhibit her work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in autumn.
"Do stones have meaning?"
Situating her work at the intersection of ecology and anthropology, Noémie Goudal's practice is anything but naïve, even if the study of paleoclimatology has given her a new sense of hope. "Regeneration of the planet may seem possible in the very long term, but alas, what we can see from the urgency of the climate is that the Earth's time is beginning to catch up with mankind's much shorter, human time", she observes. In her video installation Below the Deep South, presented in Arles in summer 2022, fire engulfed a rainforest landscape, hypnotising viewers.
Continuing to wander among the rocks of Fontainebleau, this time in the impressive site of Bas Cuvier, the Parisian artist tells us an amazing story told by her mother: in the 1970s, the Musée d'Art Moderne (MAM) brought to Paris Indian artist Nek Chand (1924-2015), who had taken part in the construction of Chandigarh, the raw concrete city created by architect Le Corbusier, from 1951 to 1965. Exiled to Paris for the exhibition at MAM, he was introduced to the Fontainebleau massif.
Au pied des rochers monumentaux, source d'inspiration pour Noémie Goudal.
The Indian artist exclaimed, much perturbed: "But these stones are upside down? You have to put them back right side up! "It's true that some of these rocks appear to be levitating, as if moved after a major storm. One wonders how they landed in these positions. And the question raised by Nek Chand's reaction: do the stones have a meaning? Noémie Goudal, as she strokes one of these enigmatic rocks with her hand.
In other parts of the undergrowth, some of these stones also bear traces of human exploitation from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.These sandstone quarries were used, among other things, to pave the streets of Paris. Since 1964, the A6 freeway, the Autoroute du Soleil, has crossed this wooded massif. If this green setting is still here, it's largely thanks to artists, and in particular the painter Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), co-founder of the Barbizon School,an artistic community based in the village adjacent to the forest.
An exhibition at the Petit Palais, Paris (until July 7), and another at the Musée départemental Musée départemental des peintres de Barbizon (until June 16) recall the struggle by this pioneering landscape painter and environmentalist. Draughtsman of the centuries-old oaks of the undergrowth, Théodore Rousseau gave rise to preserve Fontainebleau from massive logging. At the same time, he denounced the "unintelligent" planting of Scots pinenow invasive.
"These artists invented the notion of preserving plant heritage. Fontainebleau thus became the world's first preserved natural area in 1861, before Yellowstone Park in the United States (1872)," writes essayist Patrick Scheyder in his book Des arbres à défendre! (Le Pommier, 2022). A few years later, in 1872, writer George Sand (1804-1876), a regular visitor to Fontainebleau, also wrote a manifesto in favour of the forest, developing current arguments of ecology - a concept that first appeared in 1866 - such as deforestation and the depletion of natural resources. "I'm very inspired by the notion of an artistic reserve zone which inspires me greatly", adds Noémie Goudal, who is just about to set up her studio near the massif, in Seine-et-Marne.
That day, his footsteps took him to another part of the forest, along a narrow path towards the Piat pond on the Belle-Croix plateau. Lurking in the low vegetation, the flat expanse is so full of water that it seems to be with the soil that surrounds it. The beautiful leaves of the future white water lilies the surface of the pond. Théodore Rousseau sketched it in 1856, and photographer Eugène Cuvelier (1837-1900) captured it many times in the same period, immortalising the changing landscape.
These wetlands, treasures of biodiversity on the verge of extinction, are one of Fontainebleau's rarest treasures and threatened by over-visiting by tourists. Their rich depths tell the story of the forest's climate and vegetation.Noémie Goudal approaches: the water in the Piat pond is so black that it perfectly reflects the carpet of trees planted all around, giving the feeling that it could swallow them up at any moment. A disturbing optical illusion that the artist could use in a future work, who dissolves landscapes with water-soluble paper.
