NAVIGARE A VISTA

NAVIGARE A VISTA

“Navigare a Vista” by Dave Tavanti extends the landscape into uncertainty. Trees emerge from fog at varying depths, some near and distinct, others dissolving into the background. The ground, covered in what appears to be snow, is in fact the spectral glow of chlorophyll: a luminous surface that offers no stable footing, only the illusion of a path.

The infrared process transforms the familiar into the ambiguous. What might be read as a winter landscape becomes an unreliable plane, where depth is suggested but never confirmed. The eye moves forward through approximation, continuously adjusting to what becomes visible and what remains withheld.

The concept behind the work

The Italian expression “navigare a vista”, to navigate by sight alone, without instruments, describes a mode of advancing through uncertainty rather than controlling it. This work gives that condition a visual form: perception neither fixed nor complete, moving step by step through a landscape that refuses to fully declare itself.

There are no landmarks here, no horizon that can be trusted. Even the ground underfoot is uncertain — what glows white is not snow but living matter, transformed by wavelengths invisible to the eye. The work does not resolve this ambiguity. It inhabits it, offering the act of looking itself as the only available guide.