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The reverse side of tree bark often contains fine, craggy line pattern. These traces were left behind by hungry bark beetle larvae while munching their way out through the young wood. Hannah Meijer (1994) photographs these patterns and files them away in an archive. As part of her entirely associative approach, she scrutinizes these found drawings in search of the exact moment when the meaningless becomes meaningful. The abstract traces suggest meaningful mystical symbols or prehistoric cave drawings. But they might also be associated with tar-filled cracks in a road surface, a subject the artist also often photographs.
Meijer is fascinated by the contradictory emotions evoked by bark beetle larvae: while the lines they mill out seem to follow a random trajectory, their larva-sized depth is extremely consistent. That contradiction between balance and chaos is a recurring theme in her work.
For Meijer’s Markings series at Prospects, the apparently haphazard patterns left behind by the bark beetle larvae were first magnified and then reproduced using a milling machine. She thus explores the field of tension between nature and culture, which is further enhanced by her use of industrially processed wood, i.e. plywood. Featuring random confetti trails and other unintentional patterns, Meijer’s collages, the Symbols, aim to achieve this same sense of tension. Among other things, she does this by digitally printing natural patterns on handmade paper. As a result, the slow and the rapid, as well as the automated and the manual, all become intertwined.
Text: Esther Darley
Translated from Dutch by Marie Louise Schoondergang (The Art of Translation)