Through the beauty of nature and incomplete stories, Pascale Ettlin’s works abolish the frontier between reality and dream to create an enigmatic atmosphere. In her practice, the artist takes inspiration from her own photographs of nature, as well as images from films or documentaries. This is how she composed Perdre Pied (Going out of your Depth), a large diptych that opens out like a book, juxtaposing a figurative scene with an abstract universe.
The work presents us with a girl sitting on a swing, with her back to us, contemplating a dreamlike landscape from her high vantage point. This meeting of the concrete and the fleeting raises many questions: is this a memory, a dream or the projection of an uncertain future? Thanks to the striking treatment of colours, the artist tackles the fragility of our planet. To evoke the murky waters of a dense and mysterious forest, she uses an abstract combination of warm, golden colours, combined with cold and blueish hues. The dark vertical lines running down the canvas also suggest submerged trees, reinforcing the feeling of mystery and depth.
In this work, Pascale Ettlin turns the girl into a metaphor for human vulnerability. Confined to her swing, she symbolises our powerlessness in the face of climate disruption and highlights this feeling of dizziness and being trapped in a changing landscape.