David Claerbout Backwards Growing Tree (Study Winter and Snow falling to the Sky), 2024

Executed in ink, gouache and pastel on paper, the work belongs to a series of sketches made by David Claerbout in conjunction with his video Backwards Growing Tree which digitally rendered the imagined development of a tree during a five-year period in a specific location in the Italian countryside in the province of Parma. The process is presented backwards, that is, the film begins with the fully grown tree and ends with its disappearance, before it was planted, and takes five years to screen.

David Claerbout's drawings are an integral part of his practice. Each of his projects is accompanied by a small number of drawings that function as a combination of preparatory studies, notes resulting from the film's shootings, and reminders of conceptual issues arising throughout the production. Claerbout describes the work as "winter work," as he typically stops working on the drawing in the spring and begins again in fall.

The work to which the drawing relates, Backwards Growing Tree, is a digital rendering of a solitary tree in the countryside near Salsomaggiore Terme in the Italian province of Parma. Over the course of five years, the artist collected weather data from a specific location in the landscape. Based on this collected information, he imagined a tree growing in that location, and artificially reconstructed the pattern of that tree’s growth. But instead of growing from sapling to mature tree, Claerbout shows the tree growing backward. All natural processes, such as passing clouds, rain, or the transition from day to night, run in reverse, but otherwise remain comprehensible and realistic. The film is constructed using sophisticated computer-generated imagery, which create a hyper-real effect; but because of time running backwards, there are recurring moments of disturbance and doubt, creating an overall disorienting effect.