Ana Kučan: L’espace infini

Although firmly embedded in the singularity of a historical moment, which made possible their realization through the coincidence of unique circumstances, the Gardens of Versailles at once reach to a time that is outside of time. The magnificent photographs by Ana Kučan, made with the penetrating eye of a landscape architect of the highest rank, place before us all the unusualness and magic of this object. These photographs disclose the duality of this heterotopic space, its materiality and sublimity in one, its historical and trans-historical reach, its decelerated time, its sublimity created for the glory of the king, but exceeding all the calculations of power, its illusory presence, oneiric and phantasmic, yet very sensible and close, at once enveloped in fog and thoroughly distinct. (from the foreword by Mladen Dolar)

Ana Kučan is a landscape architect and a full professor of landscape design and theory at the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana.

Text: Mladen Dolar

Photo: Tomaž Grdin, GBJ archive