This site-specific installation at Buchberg combines two concepts that I have been pursuing for some years. It is a matter of pictures on which I paraphrase what is hidden behind them – a projecting wall, a vault, a door or even another picture: the subject of the picture in front was in this case the picture behind. For some years I have also been working on pictures in which I integrate branches, which is why I call them ‘Géomé-tree’.

The Buchberg work references a wide crack in the wall that, branching out finely, extends over the ceiling and far into the room. The picture conceals the central section of the crack but evokes it with the aid of a branch from the castle grounds. The crack is depicted very loosely: it is in fact a negative space, which I transform into a relief by applying the branch.

Because of using wood, I called the picture ‘Géomé-tree’, but because it was about the hole in the wall that is hidden by the picture, I added the English words ‘and through’. When a French person says the title with a thick accent, it sounds like ‘Géométrie et trou’, meaning ‘hole’ and hence also signifying the crack in the wall.

(Excerpt from a conversation with FRANÇOIS MORELLET, August 1986, freely translated into German by Dieter Bogner, published in the catalogue Raumkunst.Kunstraum. Schloß Buchberg am Kamp, Vienna 2000)

Created and installed with a branch from the castle grounds in the context of the Buchberger Sommer 1986 [Buchberg Summer 1986].