Rhinoceros (2016)

With these images of a pristine rainforest, with fauna from a bygone era, Paans examines the blind spots in our visual historiography. He modelled the rainforest after a nineteenth-century engraving depicting the earth before the existence of humanity. Our image of paradise is determined by ancient archetypes, colouring not only this engraving, but also our contemporary perception today. Paans furthermore investigated our re-creation of the aurochs (about the present) and our image of meteorites (about the future), subjects that we have an image of without ever having seen them in real life. The title RHINOCEROS refers to the woodcuts of rhinoceroses that Albrecht Dürer made five hundred years ago based on a handful of descriptions – no one questioned their truth for many years to come. The image, with all its faults, has become part of our collective memory.