STILL LIFE LANDSCAPE

BAER RIDGWAY EXHIBITIONS , SAN FRANCISCO, CA 2011

This project isolates and examines the subjects of these painted landscapes (e.g., sky, ground, horizon, mountain, lake, sea, place) and reflects upon how their range of representation allows us to blend our own memories of place, while highlighting the role that landscape painting and imagery have in the home. Reconceptualizing landscape’s role in the domestic interior provides an inventive repurposing of the interplay amid fabrication and nature.

 This construction of landscape refers simultaneously to the seemingly casual placement of still life subjects and compositions while also questioning the relationship an object has to its foundation, in turn increasing its dependency on the structure it inhabits. We have all experienced casually placing an object somewhere, not out of aesthetic choice and conscious decision making, but out of an immediate need or function. With time, our visual definition of this assemblage is modified. A heavy box is left at the top of the stairs, awaiting assistance in being moved; a carefully placed porcelain figurine breaks and is left in pieces, waiting to be reassembled. Paintings are lined up and stacked prior to being hung. Eventually these become naturalized subjects of casual still lives.
Still Life Landscapeconcentrated on the reinterpretation of these subjects through replicas, modified versions of originals and stand-ins. Such stand-ins function as an amalgam of personal and borrowed memory. In addition, we asked eight painters to choose one of the source paintings and re-create their own versions; the only parameter was to preserve the original scale. These eight paintings were displayed in the Baer Ridgway Project Space. From the many replicas and reinterpretations, new originals emerged.