Konstantin Dimopoulos

Konstantin Dimopoulos is an artist creating a wonderful landscape of blue painted trees at this year's Vancouver Biennale.  Not being able to see the trees in 'the flesh' my impressions are just from the photographs ... but they look stunning and of course the message that he is trying to talk about is very relevant.  On his website he talks about the project:

The Blue Trees is a social art action.  Through colour I am making a personal statement about the spirituality of trees and their importance to our very survival: trees are the lungs of the planet.

Colour is a powerful stimulant, a means of altering perception and defining space and time. The fact that blue is a colour that is not naturally identified with trees suggests to the viewer that something unusual, something out of the ordinary has happened. It becomes a magical transformation.

In nature colour is used both as a defensive mechanism, a means of protection, and as a mechanism to attract. The Blue Trees attempts to waken a similar response from viewers. It is within this context that the blue denotes sacredness, something reverential.

Trees are largely invisible in our daily lives, and it’s not until it’s too late that we realise how important they are to us both aesthetically and environmentally. Each year an area at least the size of Belgium of native forests is cleared from around the planet.

Yet while we do this we look at whether other planets can be inhabited, so we’ve got somewhere else to go once we’ve destroyed our own.

The colour used on the trees is biologically safe pigmented water. As an ephemeral artwork, the colour will naturally degrade and the trees gradually revert to their natural state.

Konstantin is sculptor and i love some of the other work that he has done ... especially the use of colour against the landscape.  In this respect he reminds me somewhat of Anish Kapoor.

And the wind whispered your name 2010

The Red Forest 2010