There is a section of the book “À rebours” by JK Huysmans where his reclusive, extreme dandy character “Des Esseintes” talks of a new twist to his obsession with flowers: “but now he dreamt of planning a different kind of flora. After having artificial flowers that imitated real ones, he now wanted real flowers that mimicked artificial ones.” Des Esseintes was created by Huysmans as a caustic foil to what he felt to be the naive artistic realism popular during his time. Feeling that rather than depicting anything accurately, realism in its sanctimonious unembellished depictions of life, removed its most important aspect: life’s bizarre, mysterious, general exceptionalness. Though it seems that artist Paola Siri Renard has little in common with Des Esseintes, her similar strategy to enhance and heighten the techniques of flora and fauna (its symmetries and mechanisms) to show a greater truth, immediately brought the lovely character of Des Esseintes to mind.