Philippe Parreno: C.H.Z.

In his latest project, Philippe Parreno (born 1964) used the mediums of landscape and film as a vehicle for playing with the conventions of time and space. According to NASA, any planet hospitable to life will likely orbit a pair of dwarf stars in a Continuously Habitable Zone (CHZ). The effect of orbiting multiple stars is black vegetation. With this in mind, Parreno, with the help of landscape architect Bas Smets, created a garden on a hillside in Porto, Portugal that is futuristic yet primordial: black plants grow where images fade, and we travel to a new fantastical world. Fashioned from earth, black minerals and vegetation, this real garden tells a topographical story that comes from the world of science fiction. C.H.Z. features the artist’s dark, impasto ink drawings, which functioned as a storyboard for the cinematographer Darius Khondji, as well as stills of the seven stages of the film.