Jonk -
Urban Jungle (Single)
DESCRIPTION
Each brushstroke is like a day that has passed… A week… A month… A year…
Jonk’s Naturalia: Chronicle of Contemporary Ruins pictures carry a strong message: Nature is stronger, and whatever happens to Man, She will always be there. He prints them on canvas before reworking them with collages and painting. To get deeper in the idea of the reclaiming process of Nature, Jonk adds wild animals that he shots, prints, cuts and sticks on the canvas. Seeking to go further, he also adds painting on the edges of the canvas, and on some inner elements, to depict the disappearance of the place. Thus, when Man leaves, Nature comes back through fauna and flora, and with Time, what he built disappears.
The series is optimistic. It aims at getting the viewer to realize that Man is nothing compared to Nature, that instead of carrying on a destructive colonization process, he should on the contrary respect her, allow her to come out so that the benefits are reciprocal.
AUTHOR
Jonk travels the world looking for abandoned places.
Today, he has visited more than one thousands of them in more than forty countries on four continents.
With time, his interest has focused on what appeared to him to be the strongest in this vast subject of abandonment: Nature taking over. It is poetic, even magic, to see this Nature retaking what used to be hers, reintegrating through broken windows, cracks on the walls, spaces built by Man and then neglected, until sometimes guzzling them up entirely.
In March 2018, he released the book Naturalia on the topic and currently works on volume II.
In June 2018, he quits his job in the finance to fully dedicate himself to this project.
Since, two other books have been released and his work has been featured in prestigious paper publications (Der Spiegel, Corriere della Sera…) as well as on prestigious web platforms (National Geographic, Smithsonian, ArchDaily, AD, Lonely Planet…). It has been part of many group shows across the world (Paris, Rome, Athens, Budapest, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Seoul, Tokyo…) as well as several solo shows in Paris.
Several personal exhibitions of Naturalia are planned for 2019 and 2020.
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