Tulip Mania

Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A roller or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas. Screen printing is also a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh onto the printing surface. It is also known as silkscreen, seriography, and serigraph. The work of Paris based Ludo, often called Nature’s Revenge, connects the world of plants and animals with our technological universe and “quest for modernism”. It speaks about what surrounds us, what affects us and tries to highlight some kind of humility. Drawn with the precision of botanical illustrations, Ludo’s new order of hybrid organisms is both elegant and fierce. Armoured vehicles spawn stag beetle horns; carnivorous plants bare rows of hunting-knife teeth; bees hover, hidden behind gas masks and goggles; automatic weapons crown the head of sunflowers; human skulls cluster together like grapes. Ludo’s work aspires to jolt us out of a longstanding collective denial: despite repeated natural disasters, we refuse to acknowledge our own fragile state. Humanity’s reign on this planet is a dangerous and fleeting illusion.