Yellow and blue, lilac and blue, green and blue, grey plus blue, green plus green, grey and green. We’ve seen it in every possible depiction, in old-timey postcards from the last century, in advertising brochures; landscapes cropped, in extreme compositional gymnastics, as a fabricated and saturated depiction of sunshine – grass – ocean – mountain – lake. The postcard isn’t intended to aCcUrAtEly depict any scenery (what medium does anyway?). Instead, it presents a snapshot of a perfect moment in time — a polished, fixed gaze into the type of places we long to be in. Somedays we crave cold ocean waves hitting our shoulders, getting dragged around at sea, punch-drunk in salty water. These are the sort of landscapes in which, observed from the top of a cliff, a rampant semi-circle separates the immense blue from the hot sand, and white foam appears in successive rows rushing to the coast line. For the ones lucky enough to grow up near such places — albeit in perpetual fear and respect of chaotic oceanic coasts — a tingling, vivid memory of temperature shock* is in order.
The key element here is growing up near, in, or around: it must mean something, for each of us, what shape do desires take in our minds, or what escapist daydreaming (fuelled by extreme heat – not enough heat – unwanted rain – gloomy central Europe weather) looks like. Whatever the current state of affairs may be, aching for *personal paradises* is part of geographical (more: geopolitical) experiences.
And not to forget: when it comes to the real deal, to act on such desires as the bathing season begins, the hidden facet of weather conditions pulls us into a lottery of atmospheric pressures, subjecting any idealised postcard imagery to a totally different colour chart. Blue is green, blue is orange, blue is grey, only grey stays the same. Predictions can only go a certain way. And summer might be a perpetual shower, a sticky patine, the longest thunderstorm ever known.
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Before idealised images of impossible angles (the postcards) come the eerie qualities of water bodies to reflect. Not just the sky merging with the ocean, or the rocky shores holding mountain lakes, but all the world’s things as if largely unaware of human scale and the immense **whateveryoucallit** we project onto these water bodies’ immensity; it is, of course, totally unaware of scale, and not even fish, monsters or any type of creature between the depths of alpine lakes and the pebbles on the shore care about human scale, and we just can’t wait to submerge ourselves and go on boats while the surface does nothing but react to our movement and reflect whatever it finds around it, its reflection stopping us from seeing, with our little human eyes, what is down there, underneath. Millions of years ago the Earth shook, mountains emerged and crumbled releasing tons of contained energy, and massive cracks filled up with fresh water so that we could grow up beside shimmering lakes and fantasise, for three quarters of the year, about floating, alone, surrounded by terrifying mountains; or fall in love, coming of age, and be terribly heartbroken on a rock overlooking (what a few weeks ago might’ve been) a lake of love. That is the human scale reflected in these overwhelming entities; from egotistical, semi-religious, painterly projections of grandiosity by some men in the 18th century, struggling desperately to justify their tininess, to seasonal lust or tragic nostalgia depicted here today. It couldn’t be more alluring.
*The sort which causes momentary paralysis to the body’s insides… — Did my heart just stop? Oh no yeah it’s working —
Mariana Tilly
