It’s a safe bet you never imagined you’d see a Batman suit made from tree bark. But that’s exactly what French artist Christophe Guinet — who also calls himself Monsieur Plant — has created, with a little help from Warner Brothers France and the Splendens Factory, a Paris-based design agency.
Guinet, whose work is on display both at his website and on Instagram, has long used plant life and floral materials to create artwork that straddles “the line of industrial and natural,” Mental Floss notes. From pieces like his “living” Nike sneakers to a skateboard made from tree bark, Guinet has explored melding the man-made with the natural for years.
With this project, he wanted to make a “wearable apparatus that combines fiction, fantasy and floral materials,” Designboom points out, explaining that he used tree bark, lichen, fungus and vegetal moss to cover a foam mold of the Batman suit, helmet and shoulder covering.
“The bark of the tree is like the suit of the superheroes — a protective force,” Guinet said in an interview with Designboom. “The foam strengthens the balance that exists between the symbiosis of nature and that of his mythical character.”
After completing the suit and taking the photos shown in the gallery above, Guinet placed it on display at French art musuem La Maison Muller, Designboom says, where visitors can get up and close and see the bark on Batman for themselves.Photo credit: Christophe GuinetPhoto credit: Christophe Guinet