A Forest Deconstructed

The series A Forest Deconstructed takes as its subject industrial forests planted for the production of paper, timber, and other raw materials. These landscapes are not accidental forms of nature, but carefully organized systems shaped by efficiency, cultivation, and controlled growth. Trees are planted in dense formations, the undergrowth is managed, and the forest itself becomes a spatial structure designed for production.

For this exhibition, Witho Worms photographed tree trunks in production forests in Finland, Sweden, Belgium, and France. The trees were subsequently isolated from their original surroundings, rearranged, and in some cases provided with colour. Removed from the continuity of the landscape, the trunks no longer function as elements within a forest view, but as autonomous vertical forms. The works move between photography, abstraction, and construction.

The repeated trunks create rhythms of density and openness, thickness and interruption, almost resembling a visual score or an unknown syntax. Organic forms begin to behave like signs, modules, or architectural elements. At the same time, the texture of bark and the irregularities of growth resist complete abstraction, keeping the physical presence of the tree intact. Rather than depicting nature as something untouched or romantic, A Forest Deconstructed reveals the forest as a cultural and industrial landscape — a place where natural growth and human systems overlap. The banners expose an underlying order that often remains invisible: the transformation of living matter into structure, rhythm, and resource. In his work, the tree becomes simultaneously organism, material, and image. What emerges is not simply a representation of a forest, but a reconstruction of its hidden logic.