CURA.

Orchid Island is the first solo exhibition of French conceptual artist Laurent Grasso (b. 1972, Mulhouse), presented by Perrotin in London.

Grasso is known for his unorthodox assemblages, adding an occult sensibility to the artistic landscape. His subject matter is broad: paintings, films, and sculptures all target both nature and history, coalescing through scientific methodology and technological influences. There is an appetite for observation: not only who observes what, but who observes whom – the liminal dance between object and subject.

In Orchid Island, Grasso continues this supernatural trajectory. One after another, indiscernible spaces with endless mutations: the viewer becomes hypnotised by amplified environments, each with a gentle inclination toward science. Research underpins the work, not just in its execution but also the almost divine energy surrounding each object. What follows is a strong dialogue of beliefs and power.

Orchid Island (2023) plays at the centre of the exhibition. The film renders the suspension between archival footage and science fiction. Pictures in black and white, luscious nature becomes stripped off its dreamscape, interrupted by a levitating rectangle – a metaphor for the tug-of-war between utopia and dystopia. It’s equally concerned with the origins of knowledge: how things first emerged and were understood. In a painting from the series Studies into the Past, another historical sphere is punctuated by a futuristic, rectangular anomaly – a marker whose meaning we’re yet to decode.

Grasso also plays with the cloud, peeled off its romanticised exterior. It becomes a disruptive threshold between earthly and celestial, charged with both fear and desire. A cloud from the Anima series appears, one that nods to one (of many) contradictions of society: we are surrounded by beauty, even in times of catastrophe. Beauty and danger, inseparable.

Future Herbarium (2023) sees the visualisation of 18th century botanical herbariums, captured through fictional mutations of post-disaster flora. Flowers seem almost hyperreal, containing no static meaning, just speculative ideas to what a future archive could look like – one impregnated by collapse and metamorphosis. Apply this to our current age and things become eerily prophetic. The Panoptes series is also featured – this tree-like shape with branches, each ending in an observing eye. There is as much ancient-looking aesthetics as there is surveillance, again building on that tension between the organic and the technological.

Orchid Island neatly compresses Laurent Grasso’s wider spectrum. What is perceived and what is known? Each piece operates with a familiar yet strange fluidity, offering the viewer an expanded perspective – one where history meets projection, science meets myths and the real confronts the artificial, opening up for open-ended meanings.