Adrien Missika

Adrien Missika’s work often humourfully explores the natural and cultural aspects of the contexts he studies. Using epistemology as a research basis, his conceptual approach drifts towards poetic and speculative narratives, inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship with the environment. In his series A Dying Generation, Missika revisits the iconic palm trees of Los Angeles, also photographed by Ed Ruscha in his artist’s book A Few Palm Trees in 1971. Just as Ruscha examined the different species of palm trees he encountered in the streets of Los Angeles, capturing them with a neutral and almost clinical style, Missika approaches the palm trees with a similar approach. However, in the four decades that separate the two bodies of work, the palm trees have significantly grown, sometimes ailing, on the verge of withering under the burning California sun. Whereas Ed Ruscha treated the palm trees from an essentially plastic and formal perspective, Adrien Missika addresses the idea of the urban biosphere, highlighting its fragility and impermanence, where nature can be almost compared to the industrial ruins documented by Bernd and Hilla Becher, inviting us to meditate on the longevity of representations and also on the progressive degradation of all images of the visual culture that dominates our lives.