This exhibition by Juan Millás offers a photographic and audiovisual exploration of the concept of landscape, drawing parallels between historical perceptions of the landscape, the camera obscura, and prehistoric menhirs. The exhibition delves into Romantic themes of nature, chaos, and order through contemporary photographic works.
The Museo Nacional del Romanticismo in Madrid hosts 'A grove of trees from a point of view,' a captivating exhibition by photographer Juan Millás. This project delves into the collective "dream" we call landscape, utilizing both photographic and audiovisual mediums. Millás connects historical considerations of landscape perception, drawing a conceptual comparison between the camera obscura and the prehistoric menhir, which is noted as the first object of the landscape. The exhibition, designed by architect Diana Jusdado, invites viewers into an intangible universe of optical representations. The title 'Point de vue' itself echoes the term used by early photography pioneers for the images they aimed to produce. By linking the rise of landscape in 19th-century painting, a cornerstone of Romanticism, with contemporary photographic encounters in locations like Wiltshire, England, and Brittany, France, Millás highlights enduring Romantic themes of landscape, nature, chaos, and order. The presence of menhirs in these regions evokes for Millás "the vision of a wound open in the leafy abundance."