Since 2015, the Kingdom Series has unfolded as a series of minimal interventions across Europe—quiet gestures made by clearing organic material from the ground by hand, without tools, and always within the limits of the body. Returning to this work from Madrid in 2026, as urban ecologies fray under climate stress and sprawl, the project’s understated clarity gains new traction. These actions, made in forests, meadows, and post-natural spaces, resist both spectacle and monumentality. Instead, they pose a basic question: what changes when we simply remove, rather than build or represent? These subtractions are not symbols, but tools—ways of making the ground momentarily visible again. In a world saturated with accumulation, their refusal to add becomes a form of resistance. The urgency now lies not in creating new forms, but in sensing what's already there—through the simplest of acts. Each piece in the series follows a specific, bodily method. A form—circle, triangle, rhomboid—is cleared by hand using only the reach of the arm or the span of a walk. Materials are not relocated, only pushed aside. No instruments are used. The surface is lightly edited: leaves, ivy, pine needles, soil. The results are temporary, quickly reclaimed by weather, fungi, or wind. They exist only through photographic documentation, often from above or at foot level. These gestures recall early land-based practices like those of Richard Long or Gordon Matta-Clark, yet diverge by operating without permanence, authorship, or infrastructure. Each clearing is a calibration—testing surface, time, and gesture. By subtracting, they draw attention to what's missing, to what's usually unseen. They don’t claim space, they borrow it, momentarily.
Rather than being framed by grand theory, the work functions through its directness and repeatability. It’s closer to a ritual than a concept, a recurring form that can adapt to context without losing its operative clarity. The only structure is the rule: subtraction only, by hand, within a physical limit. In this way, the series builds a quiet language of ground-based gestures—not to mark territory, but to listen to it. The shapes evoke other systems—fairy rings, crop circles, sacred geometries—but without claiming meaning. They are simply field notations, made through action. The aesthetic is low-contrast: almost invisible unless sought. Their quietness is part of the method. In each case, what’s at stake is duration, attention, and the scale of the human body within the landscape. The Kingdom Series has moved through Norway, Serbia, and Spain, shifting in form and tone with each terrain. In the fjords, rings of leaves formed against green grass; in Balkan forests, ivy patches were cleared into triangular cuts; in pine scrublands, rhomboids emerged in reddish soil. Some are repeated across seasons; others disappear after one image. The project now includes maps, photographic grids, and location-based scores, but these remain secondary. What persists is the gesture itself, adaptable and portable, capable of being reactivated anywhere with ground and time. It’s not a project to be finished or collected—it’s a method for sensing space through absence. Each iteration is a response, not a statement.
Looking forward, the method opens toward other terrains—coastal dunes, ruins, even digital spaces. Anyone can use it. It asks only for presence, patience, and a willingness to remove without altering. The subtractions invite new kinds of mapping, not of territories, but of thresholds—what lies at the edge of care, attention, or decay. In this sense, the Kingdom Series is less about art than about reading and re-entering landscapes through small, repeatable acts. What other shapes will emerge? What ground still resists inscription?
ARCHIVE & CROSS-REFERENCES
KINGDOM SERIES CHRONOLOGY:
NORWAY (2015):
Substraction / Autumn Conceptual SERBIA (2016):
Substraction / Kikinda NORWAY (2016):
Substraction Series / November SPAIN (2020):
Kingdom V / Subtraction Series
