These are notes for a developing exhibition. The images that follow are excerpts that represent its scope.
Landscapes are portrays of nature refracted through the lens of human aspiration and through the tools and techniques by which they are made. They are artworks whose mode of address is pre-eminently physical and sensual rather than intellectual.
Landscapes spring from deep affective and physical attachments to nature.
Although landscapes are generally descriptions of actual places, description is not essential to them. Rather, what is more to the point is that landscape is a mode of looking without destination. This way of looking has much in common with the way we experience a piece of music.
Like musical compositions, landscapes are never apprehended all at once but via a compilation, aggregation and assimilation of multiple moments and details. Duration and flux are part of the experience of landscapes. The centre of interest is mobile and dispersed. The gaze does not meet with another gaze but is constantly deflected and distributed. This fact underlies landscape’s democratic ethos.
So begins our Fall 2000 cover story. To keep reading, and to see related images, view a PDF of the entire article.
