Hicham Berrada

Compelled by an ingenuous sense of wonder, artist Hicham Berrada is a programmer of chemical and organic processes, which is an approach that aligns him with thinkers such as Gaston Bachelard and Roger Caillois who sought to unite scientific and aesthetic modes of inquiry. A painterly use of color is evident throughout this exhibition, which is dominated by an indigo palette. In Azur, 2014–15, timed heating elements catalyze a color change in the cobalt chloride that the artist used to paint six rectangular supports, transforming them from monochromes into imperceptibly moving pictures of crepuscular skies.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is Mesk-ellil, 2015, a pavilion composed of seven tinted-glass terrariums. A colony of potted Cestrum nocturnum, a species of night-blooming jasmine, occupies the climate-controlled environment. During the day, lunar-light fixtures cast the shrouded subterranean gallery in azure hews. At nighttime, horticultural lights on timers bathe the plants in their life-sustaining radiance. Berrada has reprogrammed the plants’ circadian rhythms so that they blossom during gallery hours, releasing their strong, sweet scent. Their bouquet envelops the visitor, simultaneously acting as an invitation and a lure that nearly arrests all other forms of cognition in the obscure space. Once one’s eyes adjust, the strangeness of the architecturally scaled construction becomes apparent: The server farm, as much as the cloistered garden, might be a reference point.

Berrada is interested in harnessing and redistributing energy within controlled systems. “Paysages à circadiens” (Circadian Landscapes) is most successful when the technical means of achieving these effects are fully integrated into the structure of work. The result is a productive tension between lyrical amazement before the poetic potential of natural codes and the stark indifference of the framing devices that bracket them.