In an endless loop between idyll and inferno, the mood in David Claerbout’s spectacular 3D animation suddenly shifts from a familiar, peaceful wooded meadow with the sound of chirping birds to a forest engulfed in flames. The catastrophe is precisely constructed: the only disturbing factor, a dead, split tree stump, is like a harbinger of disaster that heralds the destructive might of nature’s encroaching violence. A blaze beyond extinction rages in the treetops, the smoke billowing into the skies until the loop finally leads out of the menacing situation. While our gaze rests on a dark body of water, the birds start chirping again. The scene gradually becomes lighter, the framing glides high up into the green treetops of the beginning. It is as if we had orbited around the event once in time and in space.

A parenthetical remark follows David Claerbout’s title: meditation on fire. The camera seems to be panning slowly around flames and smoke that are motionless, as if petrified. Were the situation real, we would flee instinctively; Wildfire, however, evokes a contemplation associated with watching domesticated flames. Our relationship with fire is ambivalent: fascination, warmth, cooking stand in contrast to catastrophic scenarios of destruction. Opposites also figure in Claerbout’s work – fire and water, hot and cold, menace and serenity, although with neither side prevailing.

An entity as complex as it is ephemeral underlies the panoramic journey. Wildfire is a rendering, a model of digitally constructed pictures based on drawings. Prior to working at the computer with his team to implement his vision, the artist made extensive preparations, which involved both studies in acrylic and digital sketches on the tablet. The projection is a time-based hybrid, oscillating between film and photography and, ultimately, closely related to sculpture.