About the Work
It may not be quite normal for the ponderosa pine to be rooted in the sky - and not even 'Ponderosa Pine I' does so by nature - but the headstand is what results when the tree is viewed through a camera obscura. In 1991, after he had observed the upside-down motif long enough, Rodney Graham used a large-format camera to invert his tree portraits from the outset. Graham continues to work as a phenomenologist to this day, ironically defining phenomena by means of mirror images. His creative spirit extends beyond his role as an artist who makes pictures. Fascinated by music, literature and psychology, and as a linguist and semiotics expert, he examines the symbolism and structures of terms recorded in film and photography, in order to decipher the meaning and significance of the compositions of Richard Wagner, the fantasy works of Edgar Allen Poe and the case studies of Sigmund Freud. In 2010 the monographic exhibition 'Through the Forest', held in Barcelona, Basel and Hamburg, illustrated the crossing of the dream threshold initiated by Freud and Lewis Carroll into a wonderland created in a forest of wishes and ideas.
