The exhibition "Art[ificial] Landscapes" presents selected works of the artists of the gallery exploring the subject of landscape: Holger Bär, Tony Conway, Rainer Fetting, Jörn Grothkopp, Markus Huemer, Jay Mark Johnson, Lies Maculan, Stefan Roloff, Yukiko Terada, and Patricia Waller. The focus of the exhibition is on the interaction between humans and landscape. In terms of art history and the history of ideas this is, of course, a very wide and rich field, but in this context it will suffice to point out three essential mechanisms by which this interaction can take place: on the level of subject matter by depicting and reflecting on active physical interventions in landscape and its design; on the level of form by the specific manner of artistically rendering an always subjective perception of landscape; and on the level of expression by symbolically charging landscape and its elements with meaning. In contrast to the romantic idea of landscape, however, this must be distinguished from the concept of "nature" as a pristine, sublime nature set in contrast to human culture. Landscape is already thoroughly shaped, cultured and tamed by man, and the artistic exploration of this terrain raises questions of cultural ideologies and worldviews.

The active intervention of man in landscape is the subject matter of a number of works in this exhibition, and this can take on different forms. In Jay Mark Johnson's photographic work "Carbon Dating #1" of 2008, this intervention appears in the effect of heavy machines on the landscape, connoting human exploitation of natural resources and associated environmental destruction. An even more destructive intervention is apparent in Stefan Roloff's apocalyptically visionary work "BIG FIRE." Although the work was created in 1984 as a reflection on World War II, current news images make it sadly up-to-date. At the other end of the spectrum stands the design of landscape according to aesthetic ideals, as expressed in the baroque landscape elements in Lies Maculan's photo-sculpture of cone-shaped and lined-up trees ("Flanieren II," 2020): landscape is forced in the corset of abstract concepts. The result of this "beautification" of landscape is quite literally an artificial landscape. But even the seemingly harmless landscapes depicted in Jörn Grothkopp's paintings are witness to centuries of human deforestation, cultivation and agriculture, leaving hardly anything  that is primordial. In Tony Conways "Roppongi" we encounter a life-world - here the modern mega-metropolis Tokyo, in which all natural elements have disappeared from the "landscape."

Human intervention in nature can also be expressed on a formal level: through composition, rhythm, alienation, de-contextualization, abstraction, medium and painting technique. Holger Bär's pictures ("Neuschwanstein Reloaded," 2012, and "Flower meadow II," 2013) are not only machine-painted and based on digital templates, they neo-impressionistically break up the field of view into countless dots of color. Jay Mark Johnson's special photographic technique produces surreal effects that throw a completely new light on familiar landscapes. In Huemer's paintings, the landscapes are highly abstracted through the use of stylization, color withdrawal and reduction, transforming them into something like ciphers. Jörn Grothkopp effects a similar stylization my means of abstraction, blur, and the fading and shifting of colors. Maculan, in completely isolating the trees "Flanieren II" from any context, and Roloff's unique combination of painting and video also result in strongly defamiliarizing effects. Roloff's pioneering work "Big Fire" is a computer-generated image, a panorama loop of the first digital art video worldwide, created at Images II, the prototype for computer-controlled image processing at the New York Institute of Technology. All of these techniques on the level of form relocate the interaction of human and landscape from the physically tangible world to the inner realm of human perception, and in doing so explore this oftentimes unconscious process.

This is frequently accompanied by a symbolic charging , though it remains distinct from the formal aspect of the work as it transcends it in returning to the level of meaning. Elements of landscape are turned into expressive signs of a visual language, whose specific connotation depends on the particular discourse in which it is rooted. At the same time, in the works of art the symbolic charging remains open and undetermined, left to the interpretation of the viewer. Rainer Fetting's painting "Forest" from 1987 inevitably evokes echoes of German Romanticism. Patricia Waller's perfidious crochet work "Dionaea Muscipula 2" (2019) plays with human fantasies and fears with regard to nature. Another good example for symbolic charging are the mysterious works of Japanese artist Yukiko Terada ("Apple," 2017, and "Green Piece #20," 2019), which are often based on interactions between culture and nature. With their play of emptiness and plenitude, or presence and absence, however, they invoke contemplation rather than providing answers.



Art[ificial] Landscapes

Take 3D Tour