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See an Artist’s Dreamy Summer Landscapes

Karine Laval's <i>Untitled #35, 2014</i>, from the series <i>Heterotopia</i>.
Karine Laval’s Untitled #35, 2014, from the series Heterotopia. Photo: Karine Laval

The French-American artist Karine Laval was on Fire Island one summer when she first captured flowers around a friend’s swimming pool. The dreamy, distorted images sparked a photographic exploration of gardens around the world, taking her to Germany, her grandmother’s garden in the South of France, and the Getty museum in Los Angeles.

“I use gardens as studios,” she says, explaining her manipulations of color and light. “The elements in the pictures are all real, but the way I photograph them and transform them, they become projections of my imagination — a utopia of other worlds and landscapes.”

Collected in the series Heterotopia, her photographs will be showcased in two New York exhibits this spring. Hermès at Brookfield Place will unveil a window installation and video on April 22, as part of the store’s collaborative, seasonally rotating “Vitrine D’Artiste” program. On May 19, her “Artificial by Nature” show opens at Benrubi Gallery. Click ahead for a first look.

Photo: Karine Laval

Untitled #45, 2014, from the series Heterotopia.

Photo: Karine Laval

Untitled #47, 2014, from the series Heterotopia.

Photo: Karine Laval

Untitled #15B, 2014, from the series Heterotopia.

Photo: Karine Laval

Untitled #9, 2014, from the series Heterotopia.

Photo: Karine Laval

Untitled #7, 2014, from the series Heterotopia.

Photo: Karine Laval

Untitled #18, 2014, from the series Heterotopia.

Photo: Karine Laval/© Karine Laval

Untitled #54, 2014, from the series Heterotopia, which inspired the window installation at Hermès.

Photo: Karine Laval

Untitled #35, 2014, from the series Heterotopia.

See an Artist’s Dreamy Summer Landscapes