![]() ![]() At the end of a frenzied chase, one of the fawns was dead. Seconds later they reappeared on the tail of two squealing fawns. Feeling at one with the “natural” world around me, I was heading home to work on this essay when my dogs ran off the trail. This trail in Altadena that I have used for years is heavily traveled and easily accessible, but at the same time, beautiful and remote. While I was mulling over the idea of this exhibition-thinking about the meanings of “landscape,” “nature,” and “culture” and how these concepts intersect and interrelate-I took my dogs on a run in the Arroyo Seco. Most of these artists focus on the local environment of the Southern California region-including the urban, exurban, desert, and mountain geographies-as the basis for their investigations. By rethinking their personal relationships with nature, the artists also explore the impact of humankind and society on nature and the land. The exhibition focused on two interrelated constructs: “landscape” and “nature/culture.” Its artists-Kim Abeles, Sandow Birk, Laurie Brown, Elizabeth Bryant, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Wanda Hammerbeck, Andreas Hessing, Sant Khalsa, Skeet McAuley, Kathryn Miller, and Diana Thater-employed installation, painting, photography, and video to examine issues of land use, urbanization, technology, and globalization. “Post-Landscape” explored the ways in which contemporary artists in Southern California use landscape to mediate the relationships between nature and culture. It is where our food, water, fuel, and minerals come from, where our nuclear waste and shit and garbage go to, it is the territory of dreams, somebody’s homeland and somebody’s gold mine.” Rebecca Solnit, As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art “…We forget that battlefields are one kind of landscape and that most landscapes are also territories…on the small scale they involve real estate and sense of place, on the large scale they involve nationalisms, war, and the grounds for ethnic identity…(the landscape is) not just where we picnic but also where we live and die. They provide a framework within which to revisit, reexamine, and reconstruct traditional understandings of nature and landscape and our relationships to them. The artists selected offer a wide range of approaches to the issues at hand by exploring either personal or more conceptual responses to the local environment. The artists in this exhibition use the landscape to examine critically a range of ideas, including the social and political implications of land use and the control and commodification of nature. The “post” in “Post-Landscape” referred to more than the dualistic relationship between previous landscape art and the current work in this exhibition “Post-Landscape” also suggested work that rethinks traditional landscape conventions and posits a new kind of relationship with the land. In this exhibition, landscape was used as a framework to investigate further the relationships between nature and culture. The origins of landscape genres can be traced to the 18th century and the Enlightenment notion that nature is controllable, and to the 19th-century Romantics’ belief in its transcendental power. Throughout the history of art, landscape has evoked experiences ranging from the overwhelming and awe-inspiring to the still and contemplative. Landscape aesthetics generally are considered in terms of genres (beautiful, heroic, pastoral, picturesque, sublime), media (painting, photography), as actual physical places for visual contemplation, or, more recently, as representations of cultural and economic practices. This exhibition looked at the meanings of landscape, nature, and culture, and their interrelationships. Most focus on the Southern California region-including the urban, exurban, desert, and mountain geographies-as the basis for their investigations. Through installation, painting, photography, and video, these artists examine such major issues as land use, urbanization, technology, and globalization, as well as their own relationships with nature. “Post-Landscape: Between Nature and Culture” brought together artists whose work employs landscape to explore the relationships between nature and culture. Rebecca Solnit, As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art, 2001 It is where our food, water, fuel, and minerals come from, where our nuclear waste and s- and garbage go to, it is the territory of dreams, somebody’s homeland and somebody’s gold mine. …We forget that battlefields are one kind of landscape and that most landscapes are also territories…on the small scale they involve real estate and sense of place, on the large scale they involve nationalisms, war, and the grounds for ethnic identity…(the landscape is) not just where we picnic but also where we live and die. ![]()
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