The
series Landscape Projections (for an Unknown Window),
1998-2001, are digitally altered photographic images derived
from the contemporary natural landscape. The original photographic
image is compressed to fit into each of four sides of a ‘frame’ surrounding
an open void in the center of the work. This central negative
space is physically absent. The proportions of the void are
similar to that of a generic window.
This group
extends conceptual issues of other photographic works of the
same time period. These pieces involve images from nature engaged
in a dialog with architectural structure such as in: Spruce,
1998, Manhattan/Franciscan
Formation, 1998, Slump (Orchard)
I and II, 1998 and Gradient (Biscayne
Giant), 1998. This group of installations
use their scale, image and configuration as abstract interior ‘earth
works’ that formally engage architectural space to create
tension and dialog with the room within which they are installed.
The Landscape Projections extend this concept into a theoretical
dimension by suggesting an ‘unknown’ window in
a conceptual building. |
This
perceived landscape is at once a metaphysical one, the void
in the center,
and an organic one, the compressed photographic image framing
the void. This altered organic landscape refers to a vitalist
interpretation of architecture as an extension of nature,
geologic building materials as remnants of a living earth:
lava flows,
recumbent folding, fossiliferous assemblages, metamorphic
laminations and intrusions…
A parallel, historical inspiration for this group of photographic works can be
found in the Baroque era and its interest in the unification of natural structures,
systems and images with the formal concerns of architecture. The Landscape
Projections,
with their reiterative, rectilinear structure and central void have a particular
relationship to a Cartesian preoccupation with optics and perception and the
subsequent interpretation of these sciences in formal landscape gardens such
as at Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte.1
1. See: Mirrors of Infinity,
Allen S. Weiss, Princeton Architectural Press, 1995
|
