Mathieu Goussin and Hortense Le Calvez’s photographs look like jellyfish, kelp, and anemones. But these lovely-looking aquatic lifeforms are actually just piles of debris.
On the website of their studio, Forlane 6, the pair says that they intend to comment on the preponderance of artificial materials and the way they’re penetrating into every part of the globe. So presumably they understand the irony of deliberately putting trash in the water. They are, after all, actually doing it for a reason — “This weightless and slow aesthetic,” they write, “contradicts the usual way objects are consumed and disposed of in an inconsiderate speed.”
And at any rate, they take the trash back out of the water when they’re done. Although they’re planning a more long-term installation where divers would be able to see the trash creatures in their natural habitat. You guys … are you just coming up with an artsy-fartsy excuse to pollute the sea?
