Landscape is a construct. Landscape is the mirror of our soul. Landscape is the projection surface of our emotional states and sensitivities. In literature, dramatic developments are accompanied by storm clouds; in film, the wind whistles around the house when things get scary. People’s relationship to their surroundings is always determined by their emotional weather conditions. We look at the world through the filter of our memories, feelings and needs. People need nature, they consume it, exploit it and at the same time try to preserve it, cultivate it and recharge their batteries in it. Nature can heal – and threaten. Man’s relationship with nature is complex, ambivalent and determined by interests and his respective consciousness.
Landscape is also a great unknown – it is the space in which we want to orient ourselves, which we cross, in which we cover distances. People have been consulting the stars, developing maps, systems and satellites for orientation since time immemorial. The history of cartography also provides us with information about our approach to the landscape. Both literally and figuratively, it is about questions of perspective and our position in space. Thinking about landscape addresses our relationship to nature, our view of a nature that is now severely endangered by the capitalist notion of growth.
Layers of Landscape attempts to initiate a conversation about the different layers of meaning that landscapes offer to the current art discourse with five contemporary positions from photography, painting, drawing, sculpture and video.
What is the function of memories? What role do “other worlds”, philosophical concepts and literary images play in our perception of landscape? What is the deeper meaning of artistic strategies in the translation of space into surface, what happens at the transitions between surface and space? What psychological processes are addressed and can be read in representations of landscapes? What about the interplay of (allowing) growth and creation, which is associated with the loss of paradise in the biblical mandate to “subdue the earth”?
The artists invited to take part in this exhibition bring other perspectives to the table in addition to their artistic training: A photographer, a landscape architect, a cartographer, a world traveler, a sound and media artist. In this way, a broad spectrum of approaches to the theme can be shown in the small space of Galerie Anna25, as if in a cabinet.
