LOST LANDSCAPES #16

About the Item: Signed and hand numbered, Sugar Press chop mark. From an edition of 10. This body of work stems from observations based on the driving experience. Using freeway systems as the investigative constant, these paintings and drawings attempt to recreate the pure structure of urban landscape. In recreation, the original experience is replaced with the image of “lost” landscape. The environment along the freeway structures is essentially lost for the driver in the fast movement of the vehicle, because the driver’s attention is always directed forward; the landscape disappears on ether side of the driver, and only fragmented elements of it imprint in the driver’s memory. Fast driving reduces the visual experience from detail to generality and we never can reproduce the whole picture of the trip, only scattered elements as if they had been caught by a strobe light.

These pictures are not meant to be a representation of the urban landscape, they are landscapes: landscapes for the speeding driver or landscapes for gallery goers. Moreover, these images have the potential to become a part of the road “language,” they may serve as information signs for a specific point of interest or they may be entertainment pictures to break the dullness of commuting.

The formal resolutions of these pictures are influenced by the ideas developed by Russian Constructivists and later by Bauhaus scholars. Only minimal elements are chosen for my pictures in order to affect the viewer in a matter of seconds; these images must have only that amount of information, which is essential for the message I am about to deliver.