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Forêt, Vert Fragile

Arts & Sciences, à la rencontre des écosystèmes forestiers Exhibition catalog

Guest artists

Romain BERNINI Tamaris BORRELLY Thierry BOUTONNIER Jessica BUCZEK Ursula CARUEL Daniel CORREIA MEJÌA Valérie CRENLEUX Piero DI COSIMO Thierry DUBREUIL Xavier DUMOULIN Rosario D’ESPINAY SAINT-LUC Laurie-Anne ESTAQUE Raphaël FAON Bruno GADENNE

Noémie GOUDAL Francis HALLÉ Gérald KERGUILLEC Vincent LAJARIGE Diana LUI Hugo MAIRELLE & Vincent MULLER Geneviève MICHON Laurent MULOT Solange PESSOA Rachel RENAULT Sarah VALENTE Mathilde WOLFF

Scientific content

Francis HALLÉ Philippe HARGUINDEGUY Francis MARTIN Emmanuel TORQUEBIAU Rozenn TORQUEBIAU

EXHIBITION CATALOG

Forêt, Vert Fragile Exhibition curator Paul Ardenne Coproduction Greenline Foundation & Forest Art Project With the support of la Ville de Marseille & la Bibliothèque Alcazar Scenography Paolo Morvan en collaboration avec Clemens Lauer Graphic design Noémie Besset & Margaux Olivré Materials La Réserve des arts Méditerranée

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Summary............................ 5 Editorial...............................7 Catalog of works................. 9 Scientific content...............64 Committed production....115 About us...........................128

EXHIBITION CATALOG

Summary

CATALOGUE D’EXPOSITION

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«There can be no serene humanity without strong, united forests»

EXHIBITION CATALOG

Bringing together more than twenty visual artists with a love of nature, this exhibition focuses on the forest and the forest world. It looks at the primary forest, which has been the focus of research for decades by Francis Hallé, the botanist and biologist represented here through his working sketches. It is also about the contemporary forest and its future, full of dangers to which today’s visual artists are not indifferent. A complex, plural ecosystem, the unifying characteristic of the contemporary forest is the degradation it is undergoing. Water stress, megafires, deforestation, industrialisation, tourism : the forest is suffering the blows of the Anthropocene, and its friends and defenders with it. The forest ecosystem, essential for supporting biodiversity and a healthy carbon footprint for the planet, is an essential component of the living world that artists are delighted to contemplate, to recreate in their own way and to celebrate. Whether their art focuses on the beauty, fragility or symbolism of the forest, or reflects the depth of the relationship between humans and forests, the images they present call for more symbiotic life, respect and care, from a humanist, sensitive and conservationist perspective. There can be no serene humanity without strong forests. The exhibition is structured around four thematic entries linked to the forest theme, illustrated by the works on display and developed through documentary sidebars: the biotope, soil and subsoil, agroforestry and fire. Paul Ardenne

«Art and emotion are the most powerful teachers we have to convey strong, universal messages. It’s time to bring science and creativity together at the heart of society to pass on the knowledge that is essential to the world of today and tomorrow.» Sarah VALENTE Founder of the Greenline Foundation

EXHIBITION CATALOG

Symbiosis and Synergy The plant world confirms the strength of the union it has developed with the animal world. The multiple symbioses between plants and the world of fungi have created a synergy so powerful that life on earth has come into being. These unions and symbioses should inspire us. Greenline Foundation and Forest Art Project have therefore decided to travel together, in symbiosis. We need to bring together Art, Science and Education in the service of trees, forests and life on earth. Recent scientific discoveries confirm our ignorance of the complexity of the living world, its power and its fragility. More and more artists, visual artists, musicians, dancers, theatre performers, poets and writers are taking up the great theme of nature, and particularly trees and forests. Scientific knowledge must be taught to as many people as possible, adults and younger generations alike. This Utopia is in line with that of many associations that have adopted the same theme. It’s up to us to find symbioses and synergies, and to assert the necessary respect for the nature that created us. May we rediscover the wisdom of the trees, as Francis HALLÉ said. Vincent LAJARIGE President of Forest Art Project

Catalog of works

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ROMAIN BERNINI Chipko II, 2020 Oil on canvas, 180 x 140 cm. Greenline Collection Lives and works in Paris, France. A prodigal painter, Romain Bernini has been developing a body of work for almost twenty years that raises the question of the relationship between humans and the environment. Significantly, his first series of paintings, Trying, is devoted to the representation of human skulls, based on the canonical model of the vanitas. What to do with the human? The artist devotes many paintings to the world of animals, always approached in a skewed way (the eyes of reptiles, for example, enlarged and filling the whole canvas), as well as to landscapes, wild or humanised, with an ever-increasing tendency towards scenes that might evoke an intimate connection with nature, a desire to re-establish a sense of belonging. Chipko II, in this spirit, depicts a man embracing a tree trunk in a dense forest. An emotional reunion, it’s clear that humans are reconnecting with living plants. But does nature care? Doesn’t this gesture come too late?

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TAMARIS BORRELLY Cette forêt des premiers temps, 2019 Watercolour on Korean paper, 150 x 210 cm.* Greenline Collection Lives and works in Paris, France. Tamaris Borrelly never paints reality but the perfect form it could take. Among the paintings that illustrate the spirit of his work is Enchevêtrements, a watercolour (in which the artist excels) depicting a human body whose inner parts are made up of natural biotopes such as caves or deep, heavily vegetated forests. Entanglement: this is the best way to describe the artist’s paintings, which are often large-scale, combining large sections of plant life, human bodies melted into the material and into the mass, and peaceful animals in a peaceful, diaphanous, protean atmosphere, in visions not far removed from an ecological Eden. More than hybridisation, it’s a symbiotic portrayal of the totality of life. Cette forêt des premiers temps, a large painting rich in soft colours that Tamaris Borrelly presents in this exhibition, is a canvas that is as referential as it is enigmatic. In a wooded landscape, two human silhouettes with vegetal organs (the Adam and Eve of ecosophical times?) have taken their place within a luxuriant universe where other humans of a barely discernible nature roam. The effect of fusion dominates, against that of difference. Is this a metaphor for osmotic life - human and plant alike?

* Detailed view of the work 14

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THIERRY BOUTONNIER Forêt de plume, 2022 Installation: felt, nugget facsimiles, poultry feather mats. In collaboration with Eva Habasque (artist) and Valérie Tanfin (feather craftswoman). Produced by MAIF Social Club. Lives and works in Lyon, France. Thierry Boutonnier is an eco-artist who is drawn to any environmental problem: animal domestication, the artificialisation of living things, the depletion of plant biodiversity in urban environments, etc. The artist treats these different themes less literally than in a processual, performative way - workshops with local populations, collective planting sessions, etc. The theme of the sculpture Forêt de plume (Forest of Feathers) is food, and in particular agri-food, with its questionable environmental record. The artist describes his work as follows: «In a clearing, everything seems ready for a Manet-style lunch on the grass. But the original guests have disappeared and, on the pretty white feather tablecloth, the fruit basket has been transformed into a mountain of chicken nuggets, like an altar to junk food against the backdrop of a ghost forest». He adds, in a documentary and militant vein: «In France, consumption of poultry meat and eggs accounts for a third of the Forest Footprint (a tool for measuring the impact of our consumption on deforestation). From the tree to the feather is the whole chain of industrial battery chicken farming fed by intensive soya monoculture, the leading cause of deforestation in the world». A work that is more committed than it appears, under its facetious exterior.

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JESSICA BUCZEK Forêt de Bialowiezça, Pologne, 2019 Framed photo, pigment ink on Innova paper, 60 x 42 cm.* Lives and works in the Loire department, France. Jessica Buczek is a photographer whose work focuses on nature. She likes to quote the words of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, which serve as her existential compass: «To become one with all living things, to return, through a radiant oblivion of self, to the Whole of Nature». For Jessica Buczek, the image is «directly linked to nature, it’s the landscapes that inspire me, the immense, wild landscapes or, conversely, the details, modest but nonetheless bearing witness to the richness and complexity of nature», explains the artist. The quest for the artist’s own image, one that is always captured as close as possible to the natural environment, determines a specific style that aims for complicity, sharing, infusion and intimate involvement with the subject. To what end? To «re-enchant the world». Photographer Jessica Buczek reiterates this Edenic disposition as she makes her way through her series of images captured in the heart of primary forests or in contact with the animal world. The very high definition of the figure, the celebration of elemental beauty, the choice of the «universe without man», humanity being the great absentee of her anthropofugal universe (for fear of destroying everything by making too much noise?) are all tactical ingredients in her work.

* Detailed view of the work 18

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URSULA CARUEL La forêt brûle I, II and III, 2022 AcrAcrylic and charcoal on Fabriano Artistico paper, 50 x 50 cm.* Lives and works in Montpellier, France. Ursula Caruel defends a local and nomadic art form in which the identity of the landscape and the question of how to bring the drawing to life are paramount. Her creative process involves observing the vegetation surrounding the sites where her installations are presented. A keen botanist, this attentive artist studies the growth processes of living things with the generic aim of duplicating their creative nature, which is the essence and foundation of her work as an artist. Drawing thus becomes biomimetic for her, and the spaces where her exhibitions take shape, moments of balance between gesture and silence. Trees are one of Ursula Caruel’s favourite subjects. Always respectful and meticulous, the artist is keen to portray their magnificence and the prodigality of their plant networks. She does not, however, shirk the question of their fateful fate when forest fires strike, a phenomenon that the artist, who lives in the French Mediterranean region, is no stranger to. An elementary, dark, charcoal treatment of the image of the burnt tree, in a meaningful way, replaces the rigorist line. The figure loses density, substance and, analogously, vital force. The death of the tree, a metaphor for the death of art. If the subject disappears, what can we paint, what can we represent ?

* Detailed view of the work 20

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DANIEL CORREIA MEJÌA La caìda, 2022 Oil on canvas, 80 x 160 cm.* Greenline Collection Born in Colombia. Lives and works in Berlin. Caida, Spanish for «the fall». The enigmatic meaning of the title of this painting refers to a question that defines Daniel Correia Mejìa’s visual universe: isn’t being alive in this world condemning us to fall, to be too much? The artist, who makes no secret of his homosexuality, has made a speciality of depicting the naked male body in compositions of uncertain meaning, never exhibitionist or narcissistic, but dealing with a human being who is both proud and insecure, strong and weak at the same time, never completely reassured about his condition, his position in the world, his legitimacy. Nature, in this intimate affair, and the forest in particular, that place of retreat, of hiding, of solitude that enables psychological introspection? Nature is an integral part of many of Daniel Correia’s paintings, appearing as a recurring theme in densely wooded spaces where a man, usually alone, wanders - the artist himself, in a specular and autobiographical way. For the Colombian artist, nature is like a companion, an interlocutor, an environment where he can go to seek the truth, an answer to the enigma of being himself. The dreamlike tone, or naivety on the edge, that characterises this painting is not oblivious to metaphysics, to the broader question of the position of the human being in the general biotope, in a world and environment that may well be too big for him or her, or that may well take him or her in, like a refuge.

* Detailed view of the work 22

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PIERO DI COSIMO Le feu de forêt, 1505 Oil on wood panel, 202 x 71 cm.* Reproduction of the original work, kept at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Great Britain). Florence (Italy), 1462-1522. The woodblock painting Forest Fire was painted by Piero di Cosimo at the turn of the 16th century. The Florentine artist took his inspiration from a passage in Book 5 of the essay De Natura Rerum («On the Nature of Things») by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus, 1st century BC). Referring to the creation of the world, Lucretius speaks of the power of the «victorious fire» (§ 397), which «consumed part of the world in its flames, when the fiery horses of the sun (...) carried it across the whole expanse of air and earth». Fire, by which «everything perishes, consumed by the burning breath», has been a sworn enemy of forests in the Mediterranean and elsewhere since ancient times. It has also long been an ally for farmers (the practice of «ecobuage», enriching the soil with ashes), at the risk of an uncontrolled conflagration.

* Detailed view of the work 24

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VALÉRIE CRENLEUX Interconnectivité de l’Univers, 2022 Discs of cultivated plant roots, twenty suspended pieces. Diameter 45 cm.* Lives and works in Ballancourt-sur-Essonne, France. «Valérie Crenleux pays close attention to roots, the parts of plants that are at the origin of the development of every living plant being. She cultivates them in her garden and in her studio, caring for them and cleaning them one by one to make them her medium. As she experiments with germination, the artist deepens her understanding of the root system. By caressing the roots, she enters into communication with them and feels both their strength and their fragility,» writes art critic Pauline Lisowski. What’s more, Valérie Crenleux creates canvases to which she adds «her» roots, which become visual landscapes, somewhere between abstraction and organicity. This description of her working method places Valérie Crenleux in the camp of garden artists, those for whom plants are not just a reality to be observed and represented, but also a medium to be worked with, on a par with the painter’s pigment or the sculptor’s marble. As for his series Interconnectivité de l’Univers ( Interconnectivity of the Universe ), its title evokes the state of interdependence that unites all beings on our planet, human and animal, plant and mineral. Suspended in the air and mingling with it - as well as with our gaze, which they catch - openwork discs made of root networks play an intriguing plastic score, a mixture of aesthetics, sensibility and the summoning of natural facts, between presence and floating in the exhibition space.

* Detailed view of the work 26

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ROSARIO D’ESPINAY SAINT-LUC Amazonia I and II, 2019 Diptych, oil on canvas, 2 x 130 x 97 cm.* Lives and works in Provence, France. Rosario d’Espinay Saint-Luc was born in Colombia’s Cauca Valley and lived in Ecuador before moving to Provence in 2000. There she pursued a career as a painter fascinated by light and, with it, the elements: fire, air, earth and air, to which she added ether. «Close to nature, I develop the theme of the physical, emotional and spiritual impact of the elements. Ether is a primordial divinity from Greek mythology; in physics, Ether was considered to be the substance that filled space, but also and above all, the ancient philosophers gave the name Ether to an element more subtle than earth, water, air and fire, the fifth element», explains the artist. Rosario d’Espinay Saint-Luc’s paintings are always full of drive, energy and strength, and are embodied in an abstract style in which the quest for a fusion of forms seems essential. The painting expresses a moment in life, combining the state of the present moment, reminiscences, fleeting or more profound sensations, a desire to belong cosmically to the Greater Whole, all animated by the play of colour and the directness of gesture. The diptych Amazonia, where wisps of glowing smoke seem to have taken hold of an air that has become uniformly saturated, suffocating everything, inevitably evokes the Amazonian forest fires and the deadly process of large-scale deforestation of anthropogenic origin, which is destroying whole swathes of the ecosystem. Where abstraction meets the most crucial and topical reality.

* Detailed view of the work 28

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THIERRY DUBREUIL Face Time, 2023 Photograph (pigment inks on Innova paper, natural watercolour), 21 x 30 cm. Lives and works in Paris. Thierry Dubreuil is a sensitive photographer characterised by a constant concern for aesthetics and, if the expression is not overused, the search for beauty. His photographic compositions eschew realism and tend to resemble painting, often abstract rather than figurative: languid forms that might remotely evoke Yves Tanguy or Joan Miró; an emphasis on the density of detail. Thierry Dubreuil draws his inspiration from reality, but only to the extent that it is sublimated by the photographic image and, by extension, by the photographer’s own imagination. This is the spirit of Face Time, a photograph of the trunk of a dead tree covered in lichen, which takes on an anthropomorphic quality: isn’t its appearance that of two humans looking into each other’s eyes? The captured image draws the viewer into an otherworldly world, rather than bearing witness to the pure, raw reality and life of the forest floor. Opening up the imagination. «I trained at the Contrejour gallery-journal-publishing house, a sanctuary for auteur photography in Paris in the 1980s,» says Thierry Dubreuil. His is an auteur’s photograph, but we might also say a visual artist’s photograph, where the photograph becomes a painting and, in his case and in the words of the artist, a vehicle «to better observe and think about the fragile beauty of this world, dreams and existence».

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XAVIER DUMOULIN Incandescences series, 2022 Photographic prints (3): Dune, Falaise, Flammes, dimensions variable. Lives and works in Pau, France. A French photographer working in all directions, Xavier Dumoulin turns the lens of his camera on everything that defines our contemporary world: today’s urban and natural landscapes, the people we are here and now, human activities and state-of-the-art architecture. For this photographer-witness, there is little urge to aestheticise: things are, and photography records. The Incandescences series, which is as realistic as it gets, is less about staggering effect than expressing an observation, and documents the gigantic fires, the ‘megafires’, which charred a vast section of the Landes forest in the summer of 2022. The fire as Xavier Dumoulin photographs it, seen from a distance, has the effect of a force as discreet as it is sovereign, advancing at its own inexorable pace, indifferent to any form of opposition, natural or human. There’s nothing spectacular about it; the image is more pensive than staggering. Let’s leave the photographer to explain the meaning of the images in his highly ethical Incandescences series : «Fire is everywhere, fanned by all the money. Man seems to set fire to everything he touches, and the earth goes up in flames wherever he settles». Again, «a fire that we have mastered to protect ourselves, to evolve, but which turns against us to destroy us». Send in the culprit.

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LAURIE-ANNE ESTAQUE Elle est où ma forêt ?, 2021 Gouache and watercolour on paper, 180 x 130 cm.* Lives and works in Felletin and Aubusson, Limousin, France. Laurie-Anne Estaque’s truly singular world is that of collections: collections of objects that the artist accumulates in her studio, collections of varied documents, often reused in her work, that are memories of the material, intellectual and administrative world as it moves and organises itself. With this detail-oriented artist, who delves into the bowels of the working world and pulls out the moving parts, nothing is lost and everything is useful for creative purposes, on condition that it combines aesthetics and information. Elle est où ma forêt ? is one of a series of documented paintings created by Laurie-Anne Estaque from a variety of sources, including newsletters, advertisements, press articles and leaflets about forest management, agroforestry and human uses of the forest, which are not always convergent and peaceful in terms of their motives. Friends and defenders of the forest on the one hand, and enemies, economic predators and exploiters on the other, appear in a tense face-off, as if in a warlike confrontation. The forest as stake, exposed to many threats, party of life on one side, party of death on the other.

* Detailed view of the work 34

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RAPHAËL FAON Wildfire 4 and 14 Cyanotype / watercolour paper, 30 x 40 cm. Lives and works in Paris, France. Raphaël Faon arranges and tampers with images. His artistic work, based on sampling, takes as its starting point the visual offer of the mass and information media, press photos for example, which he appropriates and recombines using digital imagery (often in partnership with the artist Andres Salgado). The favourite subject of this vigilant artist is the ‘social body’, the human being in the public space, grappling with the vagaries of reality or in crisis situations (uprisings, Mediterranean migrants, etc.). The reconfigured images produced by Raphaël Faon are intended to change the point of view and, in concert, give rise to a renewed or refined perception of the event covered by the media. To suggest that, in this age of iconofolia, an image is a malleable object whose true meaning it is never pointless to illuminate: this is the logic behind the Wildfires series. In it, the artist examines the theme of megafires and asks the question: what purpose do the media images produced from this calamitous phenomenon serve? To inform? To astound, by blocking critical thought? To terrorise? Art is the counterpoint. «The Wildfires prints are made from found photographs of forest fires whose causes are not always clear, ranging from arson to spontaneous conflagration. The ‘transfiguration’ that the artist achieves here extends this problematic, and provides information about ‘the way in which art can exorcise disasters’, in its own way, as both an aesthetic and a critical medium.

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BRUNO GADENNE La grande jungle (nocturne), 2021 Diptych. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 200 x 300 cm.* Greenline Collection Lives and works in Paris, France. Very early in his career, which began in 2010, Bruno Gadenne chose to devote himself to natural landscapes, which became his favourite subject and an infinite source of inspiration. Whether it’s high mountain peaks or deep forests, this painter’s treatment of the image favours wild nature, with as little humanisation as possible. The artist works from photographs, which are themselves retouched where necessary, providing the basis for paintings in which a sense of detail vies with that of the grandiose. At the same time, Bruno Gadenne transcends both his vision of the landscape and the landscape itself, which he captures in his images. The iconic and the sublime are never far away: the majesty of the landscape is in fact its primary subject, before which the artist steps aside and to which he pledges his allegiance. La grande jungle is one of the many paintings in Bruno Gadenne’s Nocturnes series - views of forests at night. The artist knows his subject inside out. He travels, scours the continents in search of the perfect image, one that will accumulate within it a naturalness where man is asked to step aside and the power of nature in action asked to manifest itself fully, in majesty. This is a rigorous application of an anthropofugal artistic programme: it does away with the human presence, which has become superfluous.

* Detailed view of the work 38

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NOÉMIE GOUDAL Les Mécaniques : Tropiques 3 and 6, 2020 C-Print. 100 x 80 cm. Greenline Collection Lives and works between Paris and London. Noémie Goudal is a prolific photographer and producer of numerous installations, both in the studio and in the heart of nature. Her work focuses primarily on perception and the visual and mental games it allows. Her favourite theme: the landscape, natural above all else. The artist never captures the landscape head-on and as it is, but modifies it by inserting unexpected and parasitic elements: architectural models or, frequently, hiding places or plants of a species different from that which dominates the place where the photograph was taken. His Immersions¸ installations are also based on the same staging: the viewer is invited to immerse himself in a false plant cell, a simple tapestry of photographic images. In her series Les Mécaniques : Tropiques, Noémie Goudal reiterates her passion for make-believe: elements of tropical vegetation, branches and palms, are integrated into the real European landscape where the artist has planted her camera. If reality has an appearance, Noémie Goudal is careful to make it something quite different: a spectacle, a reflection, a trompe-l’œil, the beginning of a fiction. The artist plays on our fascination with plant prodigality, here fabricated from scratch and subjected to an artificialisation that is as radical as it is deceptive.

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FRANCIS HALLÉ Botanical drawings Pigment inks. Innova paper, 15 drawings (origin: scientific study notebooks). Lives and works in Montpellier, France. Francis Hallé is a botanist, biologist and dendrologist, born of an agricultural engineer father and a mother who loved art, history and poetry. Internationally renowned for his research into forests, particularly equatorial and primary forests, he is the author of numerous scientific works and was the scientific advisor and co-writer of the film Once Upon a Forest (directed by Luc Jacquet, 2013). He is an active campaigner for the reconstitution of a primary forest in continental Europe, as this type of original forest has largely disappeared from the Old Continent due to the effects of land clearance and artificial development. Francis Hallé is the youngest son of a family of travellers, doctors and painters, eager to discover different cultures and distant lands. During the 19391945 war, while taking refuge with his family near Fontainebleau, he realised that a plot of land could cover the needs of a large family. Initiated in this field by his father, Francis Hallé developed a deep admiration for the forest. Under the influence of his older brother, Nicolas, a botanist at the Muséum de Paris, he specialised in tropical botany before studying primary forests in the tropics, in Côte d’Ivoire, Congo, Zaire and Indonesia. Francis Hallé’s scientific research resulted in numerous sketches, preserved in his notebooks. Several of these highly detailed sketches, drawn in the great tradition of plant art and scientific botany, are presented in the exhibition, enlarged and framed.

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GÉRALD KERGUILLEC Arbre 1, Arbre 2, 2023 Acrylic on Kraft paper, 180 x 100 cm.* Lives and works in Normandy and Brittany, France. Gérald Kerguillec is a mental painter. His field of attraction is the landscape: the fields, forests and coasts of the Pays de Caux in Normandy, where he is originally from. The artist never works from the motif, but reconstructs his own memory of the environment. No realism, but an inflection of the cerebral connection. What’s at stake? It consists in imagining a landscape of greenery until you have green neurons,» jokes the artist. For him, painting means letting the landscape nestle inside him, by impregnation, like a mystical vision in a person possessed, and then making an image of it. Arbre 1 and Arbre 2 are both expressionist, meaningful acrylic representations of a tree on simple Kraft paper, reflecting this strong intelligible and sensitive impulse. The theme of the tree and its many facets (form, colour, commonplace and symbolic) run through the artist’s mind, emerging in a form that is both concrete and imaginary, boosted by both verisimilitude and energy. What does the artist do? He mentalises the tree until it captures his brain and comes to life in the gestures that transform it into an image. Gérald Kerguillec’s art of painting, a continuation of thought by other means, for the benefit of figurative thought.

* Detailed view of the work 44

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VINCENT LAJARIGE Bois brûlés (incendies Varois 2009), 2009-2013 1 Mathusalem, 2019: Mark Alsterlind, Vincent Lajarige 2 Variable number (installation, up to 40). Length: 150 to 250 cm. Driftwood recovered from the banks of the Verdon (downstream from the gorges), 300 x 70 x 70 cm. Lives and works in Arles, France. 1 2

Vincent Lajarige is the co-creator of the Forest Art Project association of eco-artists, the association behind the «Forêt, vert fragile» exhibition with the Greenline Foundation. He is also a painter, sculptor, doctor by profession and one of the pioneering members of the NGO Médecins du Monde. Vincent Lajarige is a humanist, volunteer and benevolent artist with a real passion for landscapes. Not only the landscapes of Normandy, where he grew up, but also those of the forests of Europe, Africa and South America, which he paints in many different ways: through paintings, elaborate sculptures and collected elements, all with a view to preserving and giving plants a chance once they have completed their natural life cycle. Mathusalem, an enormous fragment of tree trunk that has fallen to the ground, recovered and turned into a sculpture by the grace of artists, evokes the world of the forest and just as much a relationship, a bond, the transitional virtues of affection. The tree, in this case, does not die (it may live as long as the Methuselah of the Bible, nearly a thousand years), it is resurrected in the museum, a material perpetuated and preserved beyond the biological contract alone. This concern for collecting plants places Vincent Lajarige in the tradition of eco-artists who collect, in the tradition of the most humble and sensitive of them all, herman de vries (without a capital letter: this Dutch artist saw himself as one element among all the others in the world, not as a subject). This principle is reflected in the burnt wood exhibited here by the artist, salvaged from the Vercors after a forest fire. Rescue, resurrection, preservation and care - not everything is dead, life goes on.

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DIANA LUI

Tree of Life (Anthropocene), 2022-2023* Tree of death (Anthropocene), 2022-2023 Scientific content provided by the artist p.110 Watercolor, color pigments, Indian ink, vegetable and mineral inks, 210 x 150 cm. Lives and works in Paris, France A portrait painter of Malaysian origin, Diana Lui lived for a time in the United States before settling in France. Through drawing, painting, installation and, above all, photography, she develops a visual reflection centred on the issue and representations of the contemporary nomadic body - that of the citizen of the world captured in all its diversity. Her images, always discreet, seek to capture the intimate truth beyond appearance. In a meditative way, in black and white and taking the time she needs: Diana Lui uses an old, heavy camera from the early twentieth century, a cumbersome camera that prevents her from taking snapshots. Even before 2017, when this became a major theme in her work («I Will Not Give Names to Trees - A Personal Mythology» exhibition at the Wei-Ling gallery in Kuala Lumpur), the artist took care to include the figure of the tree in the cycle of her plastic works: powerful, gnarled trees, veritable natural sculptures. With its dense branches, muscular trunks and branching branches, the tree as photographed by Diana Lui plays a score that leaves the viewer with an impression of both amazement and embarrassment. Awe: the strength of natura naturans, its capacity to be present and resist the anthropisation of the world that is destroying the forests. Embarrassment: the tree clearly lives its life without us, the fantasy of the total fusion of living things is not realised, and we are excluded. The same attention to the tree, both aesthetic and thoughtprovoking, can be seen in the artist’s drawings on this theme. The artist’s motive is both affective and anthropological. «Our ancestors, the hominids, lived on trees - our bodies are even shaped like trees - and myths abound about people who became trees again when they died. Our ancestors believed that trees acted as messengers between the underworld and the heavens... Our human destiny is so closely linked to trees that it is tragic to realise the extent to which we have forgotten this,» laments Diana Lui. Regret ? Nostalgia, for sure. * Detailed view of the work 48

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HUGO MAIRELLE & VINCENT MULLER Être(s), since 2018 Photographs (portraits and masks), two 120 x 80 cm prints, two 60 x 50 cm prints. Live and work in Alsace, France. This collaborative project brings together a visual artist and a photographer. Hugo Mairelle and Vincent Muller asked various participants to create a face mask in a favourite natural setting, a personalised artefact that they would then cover themselves with while posing naked, in a state of ‘nature’. The mask is made from plants found on site, often in forests (the Vosges, in France). The participants in the project are portrayed wearing this mask, which is also archived in a photograph, before being returned to nature, without being conserved. It’s a testimony to a moment of human exchange with the natural environment. Être(s) questions our relationship with ecosystems, offering a philosophical and pragmatic reflection on the destructive and deadly Anthropocene. What would we like to keep of a natural world that is disappearing? The work also explores the biological links we have with living plants, which are used here to adorn and embellish the human body, linking it sensitively and aesthetically with nature. Être(s), again, is allusively «an ode to diversity and a tribute to peoples who live in close relationship with their environment», say the artists.

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GENEVIÈVE MICHON Les trognes méditerranéennes, 2022 Two photographic prints, 60 x 80 cm.* Lives and works in Montpellier, France. Geneviève Michon is an agricultural engineer, ethnobotanist and photographer. Both her professional life and her artistic interests are devoted to trees, in particular the «peasant tree», which has accompanied the world’s rural cultures since the dawn of time and forged its specific nature through contact with humans. She is also an ethno-ecologist and a specialist in the relationship between societies and forests. During her many visits abroad (to tropical regions, the Mediterranean and the Maghreb), she has taken a particular interest in the way the world’s farmers conceive and shape their relationship with forests, and in the conflicts between farmers and forestry administrators. Geneviève Michon’s scientific and political commitment has resulted in a self-taught practice of photography in which trees are the main subject. Between documentation and aestheticism, the photographer’s eye does not intend to make a distinction: the tree is a reality, and this reality adopts a full and specific form that the image must reflect without drifting into the imaginary. The Trognes series presented here, devoted to the felled trees of the Mediterranean, emphasises the specific features of these plant formations resulting from human management of the wood: trognes, denatured, martyred trees, are also extraordinary reservoirs of biodiversity (insectivorous passerines, nocturnal birds of prey, martens, insects). An example of nature reconfiguring itself, in spite of man.

* Detailed view of the work 52

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LAURENT MULOT Lawal Quilcas, 2022 Portrait, diptych. Photographic prints 90 x 60 cm. Created with the support of the French and Argentine Institutes, the Françoise Besson Gallery, the Metropole and City of Lyon, and the CEA (Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique, Saclay). Lives and works in Lyon, France. Depending on how we look at it and from which point in our physical, mental, political or cultural geography, the world does not have the same shape, the same meaning, the same intensity. Cultural uniformity is a myth. In a remote area of Argentina, Laurent Mulot is interested in the thousand-year-old Lawal tree, «the one whose memory never dies», according to the Mapuche Indians who have lived in this region for over a thousand years. Lawal Quilcas («Quilcas», a name used to describe preColumbian cave graphic art, a cross between writing and ornament) celebrates this tree, which is the object of a cult. Laurent Mulot, in situ, uses it as the basis for a protean creation woven from photographs, encounters and a collective performance, from a documentary, ethnographic and tribute perspective. Based on the reality of a thousand-year-old tree, Lawal Quilcas examines our relationship with time and nature from multiple angles. How do we perceive the Lawal tree? According to referents that are not necessarily convergent, notes the artist in a relativistic spirit. Scientists consider the Lawal tree to be an absolute ‘clock’, bearing witness in its rings to the conditions of life on earth and to major events in the cosmos. And by ancestral cultures, as an entity that holds the human memory. Flexibility in our approach to reality and, in this case, to the tree and the forest, revealing our ways of thinking and conceiving.

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SOLANGE PESSOA Untitled, 2020 Oil on canvas, five formats 33,5 x 38 cm.* Greenline Collection Born in Brazil. Lives and works in Minas Gerais, Brazil. A native of Brazil, Solange Pessoa’s art resonates with the «genius of place», that of her native land. For her, the artist does not come from nowhere, or simply inhabit an eternal present. As the essentialist forms and ‘manner’ of this painter and sculptor signify, a whole world pre-exists anyone who creates, a tangled world of the environment, the ecosystem, the ancestors, the cultures deployed since time immemorial. The series of Untitled paintings presented here expresses a primitive, iconic, signalling relationship with reality. The animals, the forest, the humans, all find themselves united in the same formalisation, which unites and merges: elementary and silhouetted lines, a strongly signalling use of black on white. The composition takes on a primordial, archaic quality, with one form, one idea, reduced to a form of writing that is as sparse as possible. It takes us back to savage thinking, the closest we can get to nature and culture. To create? For Solange Pessoa, it’s not so much a question of anchoring herself in a vibrant contemporaneity as of signifying what contemporaneity owes to the deep past. Solange Pessoa’s work is close in style to the art of the indigenous peoples, animist and spiritualist, attached to the symbolic figures of the animal, the plant and the essential human. Her work is a heartfelt alliance with the indigenism that has become a demand of the peoples who have only recently been colonised by the West. Forget where you come from, neglect your spirits? Rather, in the sensitive and memorial mode, make art a variant of ethnography.

* Detailed view of the work 56

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RACHEL RENAULT Mille-Feuille, 2020-2021 Oil painting. Triptych, 197 x 342 cm.* Lives and works in Reims, France. Rachel Renault’s visual universe is one of hybridity. Whether her canvases refer to everyday life, a disruptive element inevitably emerges: an animal, viscera, fish, flaccid shapes, an unexpected situation... The artist does not represent the world but a particular ecosystem, her inner world, mutant, through mental collage. An impulse to a free imagination, to daydreaming. For Rachel Renault, art, in the rhythm of her practice, is a specific way of liberating deep thought, the forces of the unconscious, everything that works in us deep down and within. Strict realism is not a vain form; it only deals with appearances. And yet, because we are human, we are doomed to mental wandering, to constant exploration, with no definitive answer and a habit of drifting representations. The painting Mille-Feuille, a spectacular and enigmatic triptych, shows us a landscape as unusual as it is lush. It’s a guaranteed delocalizing effect! An evocation of French Guiana, where the artist lived for several years, this monumental work is rich in generous plant and animal forms, and teeming with curious details: what is this naked woman doing horizontally, trapped between branches, that we discover in the right-hand panel of this triptych? Among other symbolic overtures, Mille-Feuille expresses the artist’s desire to cohabit with a wild environment, one that modern life has reduced to almost nothing. A figure with organic overtones evoking the prodigality of the equatorial forest, Mille-Feuille, a visual creation in which the forest plays a decisive, structuring role, assumes to be a psychic, metaphorical landscape, a figure of resourcing but also of letting go.

* Detailed views of the work 58

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SARAH VALENTE Fragments I and II, 2018-2021 Wood (oak) and resin, 60 x 20 x 15 cm. Greenline Collection Lives and works in Paris, France. Photographer, painter and sculptor Sarah Valente has had a close relationship with nature since childhood. She gives generous expression to this impulse in a wide range of creations, in which plants, and in particular forests, both European and tropical (she discovered them as a child with her maternal grandfather), form the pivot, the inspiration and the dense material. «In the forest, with the trees and the infinite life that surrounds them, I feel at home. When I was learning photography, I quickly moved from a human subject to that of nature. Its richness is my subject», says the artist. In 2021, she founded the Greenline Foundation, based in Paris, following her reflection «on the importance of disseminating information about the protection and creation of new forests around the world». Together with the Forest Art Project association, this pro natura organisation is behind the «Forêt, vert fragile» exhibition. A portraitist of the forest, this prodigal artist with an intense production output could also be described as a portraitist of birds, microorganisms, plant symbiosis and the life of bees - witness her monumental Beehive, created with the artists Pauline Guerrier, David Servan-Schreiber and Ugo Schildge, an immersive sculpture-installation where the spectator can experience the living environment of bees. The geometry of Sarah Valente’s work may be variable, but its determining factor is unified: to give the work of nature in action, as far as possible, an evocative figure that goes beyond conventional representations of mimicry. Fragments I and II, the pieces presented by Sarah Valente in this exhibition, are thus highly singular memorials. Pieces of oak from the forest of Brocéliande in Brittany have been encased in transparent resin in a parallelepiped shape. More than just a decorative object, certainly. Rather, it is a testimony to the complexity of natural processes and their effects, most of which are indiscernible, but which are revealed for the occasion. Here, as the artist explains, «the carbon dioxide trapped in the wood reveals traces of silver; thanks to the inclusion, it is visible to the naked eye, and dresses the wood like liquid silver».

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MATHILDE WOLFF Chêne 2, 2023 Bromélia 4, 2023 - Digigraphic print on 200g Hahnemühle paper, 120 x 80 cm. Chêne I and II, 2023 - Digigraphic print on Hahnemühle 200g paper, 80 x 60 cm. Lives and works in Paris and Cotentin, France. Mathilde Wolff’s work is entirely devoted to celebrating nature, and in particular plants. An early interest in the natural world and a trip to Amazonia, where she saw for herself the devastating effects of deforestation, have sealed a pact of love between this French artist and plants, which she is careful to represent from all angles: foliage and flowers, but also the root system, in the typological spirit of biologists. Aware from an early age of the environmental challenges of the Anthropocene, Mathilde Wolff is an outstanding draughtswoman with an eye for detail and accuracy. She uses a rather complex technique: drawing, watercolour painting, collage and tracing, and finally digital reworking of the finished work, in a rigorous, structural process. The result is magnetic compositions that insistently capture the viewer’s eye, characterised by their nature as both hyper-realist, tending towards the photographic, and graphic, suggesting a human rather than a mechanical fabrication. This stylistic combination, reminiscent of Art Nouveau from afar, has a strong power of attraction. A simple root or the spider-like development of a rhizome, with Mathilde Wolff, become major, precious figures in plant jewellery. The same iconic effect can be seen in the visuals from the Bromélia and Chêne series presented in this exhibition. All the complexity of the plant is displayed, isolated from the context in which it grew, as essential information and a window on the richness of living organisms and the organic prowess of biodiversity. As if to say: beware, complex, respectable, to be admired but no less to be preserved before it disappears.

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What is agroforestry?

EXHIBITION CATALOG

The association of trees with agricultural or livestock practices This is the simplest definition of agroforestry. In reality, there are many many different situations lie behind this term. Here are a few examples : - rows of trees or shrubs in or around fields; - hedges around plots of land or along streams, paths and ditches; - bocage (hedgerows), where numerous hedges form a network in the countryside; - tree windbreaks; - crops or livestock under trees scattered across fields;

The results vary widely, from relatively open environments such as fields with trees here and there, to more closed environments where the tree component dominates, sometimes resembling forests, or mosaic landscapes combining trees, crops and animals in varying proportions and arrangements. The benefits of these practices are manifold: the presence of trees improves soil quality and the microclimate, encourages the presence of auxiliary species to combat crop diseases, and facilitates pollination. Hedgerows play an essential role in maintaining biological diversity and preserving the flow of water to the water table.

- livestock rearing in forests or tree plantations; - feeding animals with tree fodder; - agroforests and edible forests: rotations or relay plantations combining trees and crops; - composite landscapes combining these methods.

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AGROFORESTRY: TWO COMPLEMENTARY APPROACHES On the one hand, to introduce trees or shrubs to farms and rural areas in order to obtain tree products (wood, fruit, fibres, resin, essential oils, etc.) which are added to annual crop or livestock production. Secondly, to develop the ecological services that trees can provide to farmers, livestock breeders and society as a whole. For example, protecting the soil or improving its fertility, ensuring better use of water resources, promoting biodiversity, storing carbon to mitigate climate change and helping to adapt to climate change. In the rural landscape, agroforestry trees are also markers of space and land, elements of heritage, socio-cultural symbols, etc. Because of this duality, it is sometimes said that agroforestry trees are multi-purpose: they can provide both production and services. The different agroforestry methods that can be used must correspond to the conditions present in a given area, depending on whether it is agriculture, forestry, tree planting, livestock farming, hunting, gathering, rural recreation, large natural areas, areas in need of rehabilitation, etc. This document presents examples of some of these procedures.

Harvesting in an agroforestry plot ©Ch. Dupraz

Coffee trees under shade, Tanzania ©E. Torquebiau

EXHIBITION CATALOG

TREED FIELDS From an agroforestry perspective, it is possible to modify all existing forms of agriculture by using trees. For example, by introducing rows of timber trees in cereal fields. The spacing between the rows of trees should make it possible to continue cultivating the plot using the usual methods. Conversely, conventional fruit tree orchards can be converted into agroforestry orchards by introducing market garden crops, particularly those that can tolerate a shady environment, such as certain root or tuber vegetables (radishes, Jerusalem artichokes, parsnips, sweet potatoes, etc.), leafy vegetables (spinach, chicory, chard, squash, cabbage) and undergrowth fruits (blackcurrants, blackberries, corms, arbutus). In humid tropical zones, coffee and cocoa trees are planted under large shade trees. In the Sahel, huge fields are cultivated in the middle of trees scattered throughout the plots. In addition to their production, trees play a number of ecological roles in wooded fields. They protect the soil, improve the microclimate, encourage the presence of auxiliary species to combat crop diseases and facilitate pollination.

Dehesa, Espagne ©Denis Asfaux

Trees scattered in the fields, Sahel, Senegal © Louise Leroux

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AGROFORESTRY LIVESTOCK FARMING Many livestock farms can be managed under agroforestry conditions. Sheltered by trees, the animals are less stressed and more productive. It is also possible to feed part of the herd with tree fodder, which is often of better quality and more digestible than grass fodder. In Spain and Portugal, cork oaks, cereals and pigs are grown on the same plots of land. Elsewhere in Europe, poultry is reared in wooded areas, or eco-pastoralism is practised by introducing sheep into tree plantations.

Breeding under chestnut trees, Cévennes France © Daniel Mathieu

Many tree species once commonly used to feed flocks are now coming back into use, including ash, maple, lime and mulberry. In Africa, trees provide 30-50% of the feed ration for cows and sheep, and much more for goats.

Agroforestry poultry, Gers, France © E. Torquebiau

Tree fodder, Ain, France © Adrien Messean

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HEDGEROWS AND BOCAGE Around plots of land or farms, on slopes and embankments, along paths, roads, streams and ditches, hedgerows are an essential part of our rural heritage. Unfortunately, most of them disappeared in the last century as a result of agricultural consolidation, but their return is well under way thanks to a number of initiatives. When there are enough hedges to form a network, they form the bocage, an agroforestry landscape that is familiar to some of our countryside. The bocage has a significant effect on the microclimate by attenuating contrasts in temperature and humidity. Hedgerows are extremely favourable to biodiversity, and they also protect the soil by regulating the circulation of water. Some hedges are placed along the edges of plots of land to act as windbreaks.

AGROFORESTS & EDIBLE FORESTS Agroforestry can take the form of densely wooded, multi-strata plots made up of many different species. Experiments are available in England (forest-gardens) and are appearing in France (edible forest). Agroforests are well known in the tropics (Indonesia, Tanzania, Ghana, Cameroon, Brazil, etc.) and can provide inspiration. In Europe, they should be imagined as associations between fruit trees (especially all the «forgotten» varieties) and local, spontaneous tree flora. Trees, shrubs, climbing plants, useful roots and tubers, mushrooms, herbaceous undergrowth, livestock, beehives, etc. can all be considered. What all the plants in the lower strata have in common, of course, is a certain tolerance to shade. These agroforests resemble natural forests and reproduce their ecological functioning.

Bocage landscape, Aude, France © E. Torquebiau

EXHIBITION CATALOG

AGROFORESTRY AROUND FORESTS AND TREE PLANTATIONS On the outskirts of forests and tree plantations, agroforestry can act as an interface between densely wooded and open areas. In order to ensure a gradual gradient, these «buffer» zones could be made up of the same tree species, but at a lower density, to allow, for example, the cultivation and collection of forest products (mushrooms, chestnuts, truffles, flowers and fruit, firewood), or the practice of hunting, hiking and nature sports. Assisted natural regeneration (the most interesting species are identified and protected) enables the agroforestry zone to be regularly renewed on the basis of local, spontaneous species. When combined with seasonal crops or livestock, these agroforestry interfaces can act as effective firebreaks on the edge of wooded areas.

Edible forest, France © Fabrice Desjours

Ripisylve ©Wikimedia Commons

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AGROFORESTRY MOSAIC Agroforestry makes it possible to maintain heterogeneous rural landscapes by combining the methods described in this document in a patchwork. The plots are small. Land use varies from plot to plot. Lines of trees (hedges, living fences, riverbanks) are planted (or encouraged by assisted natural regeneration) in all the landscape infrastructures that make this possible : edges, parcel borders, ditches, streams, rivers, paths, roads, slope breaks, etc. In this mosaic, the flows of water and matter function resiliently, biodiversity is expressed, production and protection are combined in a beautiful and harmonious landscape.

Agroforest, Indonésie © E. Torquebiau

Tree lines in arable farming © E. Torquebiau

The author EMMANUEL TORQUEBIAU Emeritus researcher in Agroforestry, CIRAD, Montpellier. Member of the Boards of Directors of the Association Française d’Agroforesterie and the Association Francis Hallé pour la Forêt Primaire

Mushrooms

Mushrooms engage in symbiosis with over 90% of the plant species. This close relationship between mushrooms and plant roots is known as the mycorrhizal symbiosis. Mycorrhizal symbioses are present in all terrestrial ecosystems, from deserts to alpine meadows, boreal forests, tropical forests, and in most agroecosystems. Four main types of mycorrhizae are distinguished by their anatomical structure and function: arbuscular mycorrhizae, ectomycorrhizae, orchid mycorrhizae, and ericaceous mycorrhizae. Current estimates suggest that nearly 92% of the plant species form symbiotic relationships with mycorrhizal fungi. This symbiotic relationship provides benefits to both parties: mycorrhizal fungi supply the host

plants with the water and nutrients they need. In return, photosynthesis produces sugar-rich sap that is transported to the associated fungi. Generally, the fungus helps the tree extract minerals and water from the soil, whereas the tree provides soluble sugars to the fungus. A host tree, such as a century-old oak, can simultaneously interact with several hundred species of ectomycorrhizal mushrooms including boletes, amanitas, truffles, russulas, milkcaps, and webcaps. This remarkable diversity of fungal symbionts could be explained by their functional complementarity. Therefore, mycorrhization has a beneficial effect on the growth of forest plants. Recently, controlled mycorrhization techniques have been developed.

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THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN ECTOMYCORRHIZAL FUNGI AND TREES In deciduous or coniferous forests, all the roots of large forest species (e.g. pine, spruce, oak, beech) form symbioses with ectomycorrhizal fungi. It is the fine, second- or third-order roots that have the capacity to form this symbiosis. They are located in the upper layers of the soil, i.e. the organic layers (litter, humus), or at the interface with the mineral horizon. Ectomycorrhizal symbiosis predominates in forests in regions where cold, dry seasonal climates slow the decomposition of organic matter. As a result, this symbiosis is predominant in temperate and boreal forests, as well as in mountainous regions. Based on mycological, morphological and molecular studies, more than 20,000 ectomycorrhizal fungi have been identified. These are essentially Ascomycetes or Basidiomycetes. Biogeographical studies carried out on a continental scale have shown that 60% of the world’s trees are in symbiosis with ectomycorrhizal fungi. A host tree, such as a hundred-year-old oak, can interact simultaneously with several hundred species of ectomycorrhizal fungi, ceps, amanitas, truffles, russulas, milkcaps or cortinaria. This remarkable diversity of fungal symbionts could be explained by their functional complementarity. Each species of fungus could well play a specific role in this vast association between the tree and its host of mycorrhizal mutualists. Some fungi may specialise in supplying mineral elements, others in improving recovery from edaphic drought or protecting against root parasites.

Fruiting bodies of the bicolored deceiver (Laccaria bicolor) colonizing Douglas fir seedlings. © Francis Martin

Fruiting bodies of the pathogenic stem decay tinder fungus (Fomes fomentarius) on a dead oak log. © F. Martin

Ectomycorrhizae of the common yellow russula (Russula ochroleuca) on beech roots (Fagus sylvatica). © Marc Buée

EXHIBITION CATALOG

Morphologically, ectomycorrhizae are characterised by three major structural components (see photo «Section of pine root colonised by the fungus Cenococcum geophilum»): ~ a mantle made up of agglomerated fungal hyphae surrounding the short root; this structure plays an important role in the storage of nutrients (mineral elements, glycogen, amino acids, lipids) produced by the metabolic activity of the fungus and its host plant. ~ a network of fungal filaments - the hyphae - colonising the root and progressing between the epidermal cells and the cortical cells of the root, to form the Hartig network. It is at this interface that nutrients (glucose, amino acids, minerals) are exchanged between the fungus and its host plant. ~ a more or less abundant external mycelium, branching out from the mycorrhizal root and forming a network that colonises the soil. It is from this mycelial network that the fruiting bodies are differentiated. The growth of the branched network of external mycelial filaments can be considerable (up to 1,000 m of mycelium/m of root), increasing the volume of soil exploited by the mycorrhised tree.

Ectomycorrhizae of the delicious milk cap (Lactarius deliciosus) on pine roots. © Alexis Guérin

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This extra-root network thus plays a role in exploring the soil and absorbing and transporting nutrients. Fungal hyphae are capable of dissolving and absorbing mineral elements that are inaccessible to the host plant’s roots, and transferring them to the plant partner. In addition to soluble mineral resources (phosphates, mineral nitrogen, potassium, microelements), ectomycorrhizal fungi are also capable of altering minerals and exploiting some of the resources accumulated in soil organic matter by secreting proteases, phosphatases or oxidases. The impact of mycorrhizal symbiosis is essentially trophic and therefore has a strong influence on plant growth and health.

MYCORRHIZATION FOR SILVICULTURAL MANAGEMENT Controlled mycorrhization, or the rational inoculation of mycorrhizal fungi, is mainly used in forest nurseries and plantations. It involves introducing a large quantity of active mycorrhizal propagules into the root system of young plants, in the absence of competitors (prior sterilisation by pasteurisation). In forest nurseries, the first trials of controlled mycorrhization of forest tree seedlings were carried out around 1920 in Australia by inoculating Monterey pine seedlings with spores of the ectomycorrhizal fungus, yellow rhizopogon. In the early 1980s, this method of controlled mycorrhization was developed on a large scale in pine plantations in the United States.

Controlled mycorrhization: Douglas fir seedlings mycorrhised with different symbiotic fungi. The best growth is observed, on the right, with the bicoloured Laccaria. © F Le Tacon (INRAE)

Poplar cuttings colonized by the mycelium of the bicolored deceiver (Laccaria bicolor). ©Anne Jambois (INRAE)

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In France, the first controlled mycorrhization trials were carried out at the Office National des Forêts nursery in Peyratle-Château (Haute-Vienne) in 1979 on seedlings of Norway spruce and Douglas fir. Experimental plantations were set up in 1981. Controlled mycorrhization generally led to a sharp increase (>50%) in the growth of inoculated seedlings. Seedlings can be inoculated with a fungus selected from the local microflora of the plantation site (indigenous strain) or a strain from other regions or countries (exotic strain). Inoculation with indigenous fungi is often more effective and avoids the introduction of potentially invasive exotic strain(s), which risk supplanting local fungal communities and indirectly the composition of the plant community. Following this work and a series of additional studies on the beneficial impact of controlled mycorrhization on the growth of forestry seedlings, several forestry nurseries (e.g. Robin Pépinières, Pépinières Naudet) offer a wide range of forestry seedlings (fir, pine, beech, cedar or oak) mycorrhised with laccaria, hebelomes or pisolithes. Mycorrhization has a beneficial impact on the growth of forest seedlings in different ecological contexts, particularly in reforestation and plantation programmes. The presence of symbiotic fungi stimulates the mineral nutrition of young seedlings, provides bio-protection against soil pathogens and improves soil structure. Mastery of mycorrhizal symbiosis is therefore an undeniable asset in an agro-ecological approach to the management of forest plantations.

A fruiting body of Laccaria associated with Douglas fir seedlings. © F Martin

EXHIBITION CATALOG

TRUFFIC FARMING A good example of the commercial application of controlled mycorrhization is the production of truffle plants. The first plants to be mycorrhised in a controlled way by the Périgord black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) were marketed in 1973 by the company Agritruffe, which held an INRA/ANVAR licence. This large-scale inoculation technique is based on bringing the roots of previously germinated young oak or hazel seedlings into contact with black Périgord truffle or Burgundy truffle spores from crushed truffles. This controlled mycorrhization process has revolutionised truffle growing, enabling plantations to be developed in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Today, over 80% of the truffles harvested in France come from truffle plantations. However, the many failures encountered in setting up productive truffle beds are due both to a failure to comply with basic cultivation rules (poor choice of planting sites, poor soil preparation, lack of maintenance or insufficient maintenance, lack of irrigation) and to insufficient technical and scientific knowledge of truffle biology and truffle bed ecology.

Périgord black truffle © Fabrice Desjours

Hazel tree colonized by the Black Truffle of Burgandy in the experimental truffle orchard of Boncourt sur-Meuse. © F Martin

TO REMEMBER 92% of plants form a mycorrhizal association Ectomycorrhizal fungi generally represent more than 50%

of the fungal community of a forest in temperate or boreal regions.

The richness and composition of mycorrhizal fungi

communities depend on the host plant, climate and soil conditions.

Intensive agrosystems, characterised by high chemical and phytosanitary inputs, show a depletion of symbiotic fungi. The community of mycorrhizal fungi influences the diversity,

productivity and stability of the forest, and vice versa. Changes in fungal species composition as forest stands age are gradual, with overlaps between species.

Specialist fungi (associated with a small number of species) gradually replace generalist species (associated with several partners) as the forest ages.

In forests, mycorrhizal fungi supply considerable quantities

of mineral and organic nitrogen, as well as inorganic phosphate, to their host plants.

Mycorrhizal fungi improve drought resistance, sequester

heavy metals and boost resistance to disease and stress. Mycorrhizal fungi are one of the key drivers of the

multifunctionality of ecosystems. Controlled mycorrhization is widely used in truffle growing and restoration projects.

Section of pine root colonised by the fungus Cenococcum geophilum. The fungus is in green, the root in red © J Plett (INRAE)

The author FRANCIS MARTIN Emeritus Research Director at INRAE in Nancy and Associate Professor at the Subtropical Forest Research Institute in Hangzhou, China. A doctor in plant physiology, microbiologist and mycologist, he is passionate about the biology of trees and their microbial allies. He is the author of «Sous la forêt : pour survivre il faut des alliés» and «Les arbres aussi font la guerre» published by HumenSciences and «La forêt hyperconnectée» published by La Salamandre.

Primary forest or forest in free evolution

«This is a forest that has reached its maximum level of plant and animal biological diversity. It has never been modified by man, or has had sufficient time without human intervention (several centuries) to regain its primary character.» It is above all a mixture of all kinds of living beings: - Trees, of course, of different species and ages, of all shapes and sizes, which have grown spontaneously from seeds. - But also a host of animals, from the largest to the microscopic, creepers, shrubs, bushes, flowering plants, ferns, mosses, fungi and bacteria. - Lots of dead wood and thick, spongy soil. When you step inside, you feel like you’re entering another world of beauty, wealth, harmony and peace. A cool, shady world, fragrant, welcoming, perhaps a little impressive.

Trees multiply the space where other living beings can settle or feed. They reach for the sky and the depths of the earth. From this vertical axis, branches and roots spread out in all directions. The functioning of this extraordinarily complex ecosystem is ensured by a multitude of connections : an infinite number of living beings interact with each other, fighting, collaborating, associating and communicating by aerial and/or underground means. The quality of the forest floor is essential: a healthy forest is one where the soil is moist and fertile and teeming with life. This natural forest must not be confused with a tree plantation, where all the trees are identical, often the same age and lined up in rows.

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VERY LARGE TREES In a natural forest, the trees in the canopy can reach dimensions that are unimaginable today, so rare have they become. 40 to 50 m high (the equivalent of a 12 to 15 storey building!) for firs or spruces in the Slatioara primary forest in Romania. The average age of these trees is 300 years in Central Europe, sometimes 400 years, and even over 1000 years for yew. In the equatorial forest, trees commonly reach 50 to 60 m in height. These very large trees, whether alive or dead, have a protective function for life in the undergrowth, regulating the microclimate. Their massive trunks act as a heat sink during very hot summers. They also ensure constant humidity in the undergrowth. When they die and fall to the ground (an often slow death that can last for centuries), water accumulates in the rotting wood, helping to keep the soil moist.

Tropical forest in Sumatra, Indonesia

Old twisted beech, Pyrenees

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THE FOREST IS COMPLEXITY Yet the initial process is very simple, and we can observe it every day: it’s called photosynthesis. This process, which is at the origin of life on earth, is the mechanism by which plants, thanks to the energy of the sun, manufacture their matter from carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air and water. In the case of the forest, photosynthesis has achieved the feat of creating the enormous mass of plant matter that is trees: trunks, branches, leaves, roots, at the base of the food chains of all the living creatures in the forest. 75% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity is found in forests. But the result of this immense biodiversity is much more than the sum of its parts: from the shady, silent, damp undergrowth to the light-filled canopy, the forest is an exceptional biological whole. No one can reproduce this performance. This extraordinarily complex ecosystem functions through a multitude of connections : an infinite number of living beings interact with each other, fighting, collaborating, associating and communicating by air or underground. If a tree is attacked by an over-enthusiastic herbivorous animal, it may emit volatile substances that provoke a reaction from the other trees, whose leaves then become toxic. The predator then has no choice but to eat further away. The filaments of the fungi run through the forest floor, forming an immense underground network with the tree roots. underground network. The connections of the forest, is mutual aid on a grand scale, an authentic society. Little owl

Vosges forest in autumn

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NO FOREST WITHOUT SOIL It is here, at the foot of the trees, that another essential process takes place. Leaves, dead wood and other plant and animal debris on the ground form a thick layer of organic matter called litter. Decomposed by fungi, insects and micro-organisms, the litter is transformed into humus, which gradually mixes with the mineral matter. Little by little, soil forms deep down. It is in soil that the tree roots combine with the filaments filaments (mycelium) of the fungi and form a symbiotic symbiosis, i.e. an association favourable to both partners. partners. The trees supply the fungi with carbohydrates in exchange for water and minerals. minerals. There are also symbioses with bacteria which supply nitrogen to certain plants. A healthy forest forest is one in which the soil is moist and fertile, teeming with life. You can recognise it by its colour: organic matter gives it its blackish hue. You can recognise it by smell: it smells good, it’s the bacteria that give it that warm humus scent. give it that warm humus smell.

Leaf litter, Vosges

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Forest regeneration in a windfall, Pyrenees

Beech forest, Vosges

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THE FOREST IS RECYCLING Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air, store carbon in their wood, produce oxygen and release water vapour. They are the champions of services rendered to the earth. Free-growing forests repair the soil, filter water, reduce pollution, produce rain and protect against wind, sun, cold and erosion. A forest is an enormous mass of organic matter, both plant and animal. All these living things are part of the food chain. Thanks to the trees, this organic matter is preserved for centuries in the biomass and transferred to the soil so that other living things can benefit from it.

Fungi are the main recyclers, decomposing the wood. In the soil, a multitude of micro-organisms, bacteria and insects continue the work. Without these decomposers, the forest would be a pile of dead wood.

Mushrooms along a beech root, Vosges

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THE FOREST IS LONG TIME The forest seems unchanging because trees take a long time to grow. The growth and transformation of trees is imperceptible to the naked eye, except for leaf fall and flowering. Trees do not move, a symbol of permanence. But the forest is constantly renewing itself: when a tree falls, a clearing called a windfall is formed and the light allows new trees to grow. Pollen disperses and animals contribute seeds: diversity changes and increases over time. Over this very long period, the forest builds a thick soil, guaranteeing its longevity and resilience. But this is also a matter of patience: it takes two centuries to build 1 cm of soil ! When we destroy a natural, ancient forest, we destroy thousands of years. When forest biodiversity disappears, millions of years of evolution are lost.

Mosses in the undergrowth, Vosges

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FORESTS ARE THE BEST RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE Forests mitigate climate change by fixing carbon in the trees and transferring it to the soil. It is a veritable carbon capture factory, the greenhouse gas that we emit in excessive quantities through our industrial activities (transport, factories, mineral fertilisers, livestock farming, fossil fuels, etc.) and which is the cause of climate change. All the carbon stored in the wood and in the soil is carbon that is not in the atmosphere. The soil of a natural, ancient forest contains an abundance of carbon.

Undergrowth stream, Vosges

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The authors ROZENN TORQUEBIAU An author for young people, she has co-written « L’étonnante vie des plantes » with Francis Hallé (Éditions Actes-Sud, 2021). She is a member of the educational team of the Association Francis Hallé pour la Forêt Primaire. Young holly in the undergrowth, Sologne

But the forest is also capable of adapting to climate change. If the weather is abnormally hot or cold, the forest can withstand the unexpected. The same is true if it rains too much or too little. Water accumulates in the litter and dead wood, ensuring that the undergrowth remains moist. The diversity of the freely evolving forest and the many interactions between trees and other living contribute to its resilience, i.e. its ability to withstand resilience, i.e. its ability to withstand a hazard and to recover if its functioning has been altered.

EMMANUEL TORQUEBIAU Emeritus researcher in Agroforestry, CIRAD, Montpellier. Member of the Boards of Directors of the Association Française d’Agroforesterie and the Association Francis Hallé pour la Forêt Primaire.

Fires & Megafires

A mega-fire is beyond human control. Summary of the interview with Lieutenant Colonel Philippe HARGUINDEGUY of the Aquitaine fire brigade on 4 October 2022. A particular period in the summer of 2022 led to the outbreak of so-called «abnormal» fires in Gironde at three specific sites: the Teste de Busch forest, forestry plantations in the commune of Landiras and forest areas in the commune of Hostens. They have not been classified as mega-fires, as they are slightly smaller than 40,000 hectares according to the definition. The circumstances that favour their appearance are : prolonged heatwaves (temperatures in excess of 40°C), intense drought, local winds caused by the fires themselves (gusts of up to 80 km/h) and large concentrations of coniferous trees. Characteristics : - Temperatures sometimes reaching 2,000°. Attempts to extinguish the fires by bringing in large quantities of water are illusory: the water evaporates before it reaches the flames. - The flames reached a height of 30 metres in some places.

- The flame front was at most 6 kilometres long. - Trees planted at the same height encourage the fire to spread, which can occur at a speed of 4 to 5 kilometres per hour. These characteristics make it impossible to control these unusual fires. It has been found that only autumn rains can bring the intensity of these fires under control. In order to limit the spread of the fires, trees need to be felled to create large spans. The fires were declared extinguished in mid-September 2022. However, it was found that the lignite present deep underground was still burning in April 2023. 95% of fires are of human origin. Most are caused by negligence (70%). Prevention and education are the best ways of combating fires and megafires.

Tree of Life* Tree of Death** (Anthropocene) 2022-2023 by Diana Lui

«When I decided to take part in this exhibition dedicated to our forests, my immediate desire was to learn more about the planet on which I live. I’ve always taken this home we call Earth for granted, and it’s only in recent years that I’ve become extremely concerned about the alarming rate at which forests are disappearing, particularly in Malaysia, where I was born. Being from Malaysia, tropical nature was always present in my childhood and even in my garden. Seeing lush forests and indigenous lands being replaced by skyscrapers, noisy motorways and pollution made me think seriously about the fragile balance between humans, the earth and living things. At a time when climate change is occurring around the world with alarming frequency, we would have to choose to be deaf and blind to ignore the urgent deterioration of our environment.»

Countries most affected by the loss of primary forests, in terms of area, in 2022

Autres Malaisie Papouasie Nouvelle Guinée Cameroun Laos Colombie

Brésil

Pérou Indonésie Bolivie

République démocratique du Congo

Top 10 countries for the increase in primary forest loss in 2022 Ghana + 71% Bolivie + 59% Angola + 52% Cameroun + 40% Columbia + 32% Laos + 31% Argentine + 26% Philippines + 25% Equateur + 25% Liberia + 23%

World Resources Institute / Global Forest Watch

Tree of life

Tree of Life (Anthropocene) 2022-2023 Tree of Life is an attempt to map the planet on which I live and to memorise what remains of our forests in different parts of our planet. This map of the world painted as a symmetrical mirror in the manner of Rorschach is a way for me to ‘see’ the green world again, or what is left of our forests, as a vanishing mirage. The original map was created by Adam Symington using artificial intelligence that processed information from the Modis sensor on the Terra satellite reflecting the amount of green canopy remaining around the globe. Source : https://www.visualcapitalist. com/cp/mapping-worlds-forestshowgreen-is-our-globe/

For real-time information on what’s left of our green world mapped by the Global Forest Watch website, please scan this QR code with your mobile phone’s camera:

Tree of life

Tree of Death (Anthropocene) 2022-2023 Tree of Death is the antithesis of Tree of Life, yet another way of seeing and better understanding the world and its disappearing forests. As I was mapping the world and pointing out in red all the areas where a significant loss of tree cover was detected, I noticed the area that I had painted in green in Tree of Life, so I painted similar areas in red. The red areas represent forests that are disappearing or have disappeared in the last twenty years alone. It’s an alarming picture of our future when you consider the growing human population on Earth.

square kilometres of Amazonia were destroyed for road development. Deforestation and fragmentation are caused by a range of human development activities. But they are also exacerbated by climate change, with an increase in forest fires, hurricanes, droughts and other extreme weather events, as well as invasive species and insect infestations that disrupt forest ecosystems.» - extract from article Mapping the World’s Forests: How Green is Our Globe? Adam Symington & Freny Fernandes for TheVisualCapitalist.com, source: https:// www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapping-worldsforestshow-green-is-our-globe/

«Since 2000, the world has lost more than 104 million hectares of pristine, untouched forest landscape. In 2020 alone, more than 10,000

The original map I used for Tree of Death was created by Adam Symington using an artificial intelligence programme to map global forest cover from 2000 to 2021. The data to create the map came from the University of Maryland.

Committed production

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Note of intent The scenography of the Forêt, Vert Fragile exhibition is designed as a rhythmic stroll, inspired by a walk in the forest. The space is deliberately dense, punctuated by totems displaying the works and furniture for sitting and reading. It offers a number of different ways to visit the exhibition, highlighting the paintings, photographs and installations as much as the scientific content. Paolo Morvan in collaboration with Clemens Lauer

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A range of modular furniture Inspired by stacked logs, the furniture is designed two standardised modules made entirely from reused materials materials from La Réserve des arts Méditerranée’s stock. Once they have been assembled, the units can be used as both and presentation elements, as well as a set of strong, distinctive graphic elements, giving the exhibition a real aesthetic aesthetic mark on the exhibition. This composition is intended to be light, yet reminiscent of the density of a forest. Two types of industrial wood were used in the design of the design of the assembly modules. Their treatment is to evoke their natural characteristics and appearance natural : - Rough cleats, vertical elements of varying heights reminiscent of tree branches - Chipboard, assembled in the form of a log and stained to reflect its original origin. The range includes three types of elements : - scientific mediation furniture - vertical picture rails - plinths and seats The problems of assembly, dismantling, storage and transport were taken into account right from the design stage. All the furniture is designed to be dismantled quickly and easily. The modules in the range, all square in shape, can be stored and transported on pallets.

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The logic of re-use Derived from the wood industry and mechanically transformed, all the materials used bear the scars of a previous life (in this case, exhibition picture rails and catwalk set elements). Traces of screws, saws, staples, paint and glue alter the original smooth industrial appearance, and remind us of the life of this raw material, its path and its journey. Rather than attempting to hide this damage, it has been repaired and enhanced by ornamentation derived from joinery and cabinet-making techniques. Each element has been worked using these techniques to bring the raw material back to life. The various modules have been sanded, milled, stained, oiled and re-filled to give them the appearance of a genuine manufactured product, sometimes reminiscent of ceramics. Using re-used materials avoids carbon impact in two ways: : - the non-production of new materials - the non-destruction of re-used materials. Indeed, the production of new materials would have generated carbon emissions quantified here according to the weight used: - 7 kilos of plywood corresponding to 4.76 kilos of CO2eq - 690 kilos of chipboard, corresponding to 593.4 kilos of CO2eq - 128 kilos of cleats corresponding to 33.28 KG CO2eq Thus, the carbon avoided by using pre-existing materials represents 631.44 kilos CO2eq. The non-destruction of re-used materials avoids the emission of 4,21575 kilos of CO2eq at the landfill site. In total, all the furniture in the Forêt, Vert Fragile exhibition will have prevented the emission of 635,65575 kilos of CO2. The materials were collected and recycled by La Réserve des arts Méditérannée, an organisation specialising in reuse in the cultural sector.

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Created in 2021 on the initiative of visual artist Sarah Valente, the Greenline Foundation (GLF) endowment fund harness the power of art to protect the world’s forests. Born of a personal commitment to the environment, the fund is also based on a growing desire to get involved in the art sector. Its action is threefold: - Harnessing the power of art to protect forests by raising society’s awareness of the environmental cause through artistic events. Raising awareness through art to help people rediscover the beauty and critical role of nature, and more specifically of forests. - Preserving existing forests and rewilding damaged areas, in particular by planting trees or buying back plots of land. - Rally artists and art professionals by inviting them to work together to protect the forests.

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Following the making of the film Il était une forêt released in 2013 (directed by Luc JACQUET and Francis HALLE Scientific Advisor), in order to continue the adventure, the Forest Art Project association was created in 2016. Its objective is «Art and Science working together for the future of our planet’s forests». This statement has naturally opened up its exhibition and scientific conference projects to many artists and specialists already involved in this field. Quite logically, an educational vocation aimed at the general public and the younger generation has become essential, given the general ignorance we have of the plant world and forests. Recent scientific discoveries are fascinating and should profoundly change the way we look at the «living» world to which we belong. The transmission of knowledge and education have led us to enrich our object: «Art, Science and Education are committed to forests». This founding idea invites us to commit and expand our actions in the service of in the service of this cause that goes beyond us.

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Contact contact@greenline.foundation