Changing Landscape
Changing Landscape Curated by Peter Wilde and Amrita Dhillon Text by Amrita Dhillon
Said Baalbaki, Stefano Bosis, Amrita Dhillon, Peter Doig, GODsDOGs, Halina Hildebrand, Jann Holstein, Émile Kirsch, Magdalena Morey, Claudia Rega, Nina Rodin, René Schoemakers, Drew Simpson, Michael Stecky, Emilie Trice, Peter Wilde, Christopher Winter
Cover: GODsDOGs, Rost & Knochen, 2020 , Ed. of 10, 50 x 46.5 cm, Digital Photoprint on Hahnemühle Museums Etching on Alu Dibond Left: Detail of Peter Doig, Imaginary Boys, 2013, Pigment print, Edition of 500, 86 x 64,1 cm
Karl Oskar Gallery is proud to present 'Changing Landscape’: a digital show exhibiting a wide range of artists, which deals with our connection to the natural world and the tenuous nature of that bond. Changing Landscape reflects upon a variety of responses to the landscape as subject, from nostalgia to alienation, from mystical to existential. Linking these varying points of reference is the reality of the natural world as a common inheritance and a shared struggle. The landscape lives on in art: it survives the cliched associations and old fashioned stereotypes the genre brings with it, and is ever more relevant in the face of our impending climate catastrophe.
We begin with a natural world devoid of human presence, a world before or after our time. In Peter Wilde’s Gathering (2020) and Halina Hildebrand’s Wald II/3 (2020), there may be no people, but there certainly are subjects: Wilde’s painting is a loving portrait of clouds, and Hildebrand’s superimposed trees are spirits, with personalities and destinies of their own. Dead or alive, biological or meteorological, this is the natural world without us.
Left: Halina Hildebrand, Wald II/3, 2020, Digital print on Baryta paper Above: Peter Wilde, Gathering, 2020 , Oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm
In Peter Doig, GODsDOGs, and Christopher Winter we see a profound fascination with the hidden magic of the natural world. Doig’s Imaginary Boys (2013), with its misty forest and translucent figures gliding on a pale lake, represents a mysterious, gentle form of magic; as opposed to the glowing, frenetic colours and majesty of the forest in GODsDOGs’ Rost & Knochen (2020), which have all of the power and awe of a cathedral. Christopher Winter’s Bay of Necessity (2021) and Echo Beach (2019), awash with drug magic and ecstasy, explore the psychedelic power of nature and the ideal experience of an imagined reality.
Left: GODsDOGs, Rost & Knochen, 2020 , Ed. of 10, 50 x 46.5 cm, Digital Photoprint on Hahnemühle Museums Etching on Alu Dibond Above: Christopher Winter, Bay of Necessity, 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 110 x 130 cm
Amrita Dhillon and Peter Doig create nostalgic landscapes, built from fragments of photographs and memories. Doig’s Imaginary Boys (2013) is an image that lies somewhere between the real and the imagined, harkening back to his childhood in Trinidad. Dhillon’s Journey to Lal Tibba (2021) also returns to a childhood landscape — this time to the high peaks of the Himalayas where a local puppy salesman takes a melancholy path, on his way to sell his wares.
Left: Peter Doig, Imaginary Boys, 2013, Pigment print, Edition of 500, 86 x 64,1 cm Above: Amrita Dhillon, Journey to Lal Tibba , 2021, Oil on board, 120 x 84 x 2 cm
Drew Simpson and Rene Shoemakers construct landscapes rife with historical commentary and symbolic meaning. Placed within an idyllic rural setting, Simpson’s painting Tier 1 (2010), features aggressive, red flowers that seem almost carnivorous, next to a model of a World War 2 airplane. René Schoemakers builds his landscapes from the ground up, entirely from scratch: Die Kulissenschiebung (2017) is a photorealistic painting based on a clay model of the garden of eden as an island, including models of his wife and himself as Adam and Eve.
Above:: Drew Simpson, Tier 1, 2010, Oil on canvas, 25 x 25 cm Right: René Schoemakers, Die Kulissenschiebung, 2017, Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 130 cm,︎︎ ︎ ︎ ︎
In Magdalena Morey, Stefano Bosis and Claudia Rega, we see an attempt to evoke the landscape through the texture and shape of non-representational forms. Magdalena Morey’s Thoughts and currents (2020) creates a topography of paradise, of never-ending blue seas and distant forests, through layers of texture and colour. Stefano Bosis’ Tusilata (2021) and Fanete (2021) build landscapes full of movement and life from thick impasto paint.
Left:: Magdalena Morey, Thoughts and currents, 2020, Acrylic, pastel and Gold Leaf, 100 x 100 cm Above: Stefano Bosis, Fanete, 2021, Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm
Moving away from the candied hues of Bosis and Morey, we turn to Claudia Rega’s jungle palette. Petrichor (2021), with its olive greens and deep yellows with flashes of pink, might as well be a chronicle of life at the lower reaches of a great rainforest.
Left:: Stefano Bosis, Tusilata, 2021, Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm Above: Claudia Rega, Petrichor , 2021 , Oil on canvas , 70 x 90cm
Working in the space between painting and sculpture, Michael Stecky invents entirely new geographies using a unique method of assembling puzzle pieces. In 5 LANDSCAPES (2019), his arrangement of painted puzzle pieces in a grid results in a map of colourful peaks and valleys.
Left:: Michael Stecky, 5 LANDSCAPES, 2019, found objects. spray paint, wood, 57 x 42 x 4cm Above: Detail, Michael Stecky, 5 LANDSCAPES, 2019
With only rare pockets of the earth that remain untouched by the human hand, the story of the landscape has also become a story of human greed and destruction. Emilie Trice and Said Baalbaki portray landscapes ravaged by disasters. Trice’s video Millennial Pink (2020) follows the artist wandering through a barren landscape after a forest fire, as she fruitlessly attempts to fight the devastation with a single fire extinguisher. Said Baalbaki’s Mon(t) Liban (2014) deals with the horrors of war in Lebanon, where the landscape which emerges from the this destruction is composed of suitcases and debris, piled into mountainlike assemblages.
Left: Emilie Trice, Millennial Pink (video still), 2020, Dye sublimation printed on aluminum, Edition 2/10 +2 APs), 45 x 81 cm
Above: Nina Rodin, Proscenium, 2019, Glicee print on dibond, 30 x 42 cm Right: Emile Kirsch, Nature is speaking - The Unfinishing of a Painting, 2016, Ink on plastic sheeting, 229 x 330cm
Nina Rodin’s Proscenium (2019), is a photograph of a forest installation featuring a curtain constructed from flagging tape — a type of tape used for marking trees to be felled. The tape, with its aesthetically pleasing colours and morbid function, speaks to the thoughtless destruction of forests that continue to feed a pattern of consumption which has become entirely untenable. Emile Kirsch’s aptly titled Nature is Speaking - The Unfinishing of a Painting (2016), is a foreshadowing of this destiny. The abstract green mass, reminiscent of a lush forest, is set against a background of pale, smoke-like blooms that surround it
Jann Holstein’s monochrome teal paintings deal with the myths and conspiracy theories that emerge from natural events. Berg (2021) is based on a supposedly authentic photograph of the iceberg which brought the Titanic down — one of many photographs that claim to portray the original. Stein (2021) features a comet, an object which has been associated with both auspicious and ominous predictions, whose symbolic power has been harnessed by religions and cults throughout history.
Above: Jann Holstein, Berg and Stein, 2021, Oil and watercolour on canvas, 30 x 45 cm
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