Tombeau Imaginaire 23 2019

Elina Brotherus made "Tombeau Imaginaire 23" using photography to ask questions about seeing the world. There is a cool restraint in Brotherus's palette, using natural greys, greens and browns to depict the ruins of a stone building. The image is broken into two halves, almost like a diptych, or a distorted reflection. The ruined walls are made of small, textured stones. The arches are solid dark voids, like eyes, and some of them are overgrown with spiky tufts of wild grass. In one half, we see a figure in a dark cloak gazing towards the ruins, as if she were an echo of the building itself. There is a softness in the landscape, a hazy sense of atmosphere that gives the picture a wistful, melancholy feeling. It reminds me of a painting by Caspar David Friedrich; they both use landscape as a reflection of an inner, emotional world. It is a conversation between artworks over time and space.