The Paradoxical Nature of the Line

In the series ‘The Paradoxical Nature of the Line, 2019’, Diego Ferrari physically draws and adds constructed lines on the landscape. He questions our notions of exoticism, wilderness, and rationality. He also proposes a moral reflection on the impact of humans in nature, by drawing a line, so to speak, between the human and the more-than human.

A line in the natural landscape is not just an intervention in a physical place but also a remark on a state of mind. The natural environment is a living entity, separate from human consciousness, and in this manner it also delineates and contains our existence, just as empirical forms - shapes, equations, geometries - do. The line presents us with a relational path to the sublime within nature.

In this sense Ferrari calls attention to the concept of the mathematical sublime (first theorised by Kant); the line elicits an awareness of the natural scale and magnitude of the landscape, a sense of awe which transcends measurability, opening out, eventually, into infinity.