Land scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
Stephen Chen
Lives and works in Toronto, Ontario( Canada)
An artist ' s statement
B
OUNDED NATURE is a photographic series that investigates the dialectic and tension between the natural and the man-made; how nature is contained, pruned, and rendered“ invisible”. Nature becomes dis-“ figured” through de-centering, which is both a commentary and metaphor for urban dwellers’ ritualized and cultivated unconscious of their impacts on the larger environment in their everyday actions.
Urban photography has created a pervasive trope of the city to the extent we learn not to“ see” nature in depictions of urban settings; our gaze cultivated instead towards the geometry and lines of the man-made. On the other hand, landscape photography( whether the unspoiled vistas of Ansel Adams, or the degraded beauty of Edward Burtynsky) have favoured exotic and far-flung locales that further distance the urban dweller in appreciating their intricate relation to the larger environment.
In hybridizing tropes of landscape and urban photography to focus on the dis-“ figured” nature, BOUNDED NATURE attempts to center the relationship of the natural in the urban landscape by the intimacy of the subject matter, and in shifting the discourse of weeds / decay to a symbol of optimism and struggle.
The use of false-color infrared imagery renders the typically“ invisible”/” ignored” nature in those settings to the foreground; and represents a new way of seeing the everyday and our relationship to the environment.
Stephen Chen