Cryptic Landscape Series
Paper pulp and spray paint
52 x 36 inches
Cryptic Landscape 1 is based on a repeating dream I used to have as a child. The dream itself was very abstract, focussing more on a contrast of textures than about my place within it. In the dream, I look down at the surface of a dark and tempestuous sea. The black fluid churns and swells, but it is more like wet cement than water. Contrasting this chaos, like an island, a plain of pale smoothness floats. I feel fear that the island may be crushed out of existence by the waves, but I never see it happen. While I’m dreaming, I feel my body lying in my bed, but my limbs are too heavy to move and I am being crushed under my own weight. It’s terrifying, and I wake in a sweat, but I don’t call it a nightmare. I think of this dream often. My interpretation has evolved as time goes on. I’ve thought it was perhaps my soul? Or maybe my future, a whole life of emotions pressed into one diamond image. I will never know for certain.
In basing this work on my dream, I kept in mind the works of David Lynch and also the Stenness Standing Stones of Scotland. Both, the films of David Lynch and the Standing Stones, perform like magic tricks. There is a lasting fascination with them that I believe is due to there being a vital piece of information that is missing. Because of this missing piece of the puzzle, the intent of these pieces can never be concrete. Mystery breathes life into the works in a way that perfect representations can never achieve. I left some elements outside of my control to preserve an organic look. The “patch of smoothness” I reimagined as a gold pour, of which I could only control its location and not its borders.
Looking down at this piece, it resembles a topography. The warped, rough material reminds of wind-swept ice formations or the surface of the Moon, bending upwards like at the foot of a mountain. Perhaps the gold is a territory, a golden land, or a promised land. The personal interpretations that arise is inevitably what is captured.
Cryptic Landscape 2 is an experimental second piece in a series of abstract landscape sculptures. Paper pulp as a material has an arid, lunar-like appearance. Where its predecessor was a dreamscape, Cryptic Landscape 2 pushes further into the direction of the celestial. The main circular form is modelled after the impact craters of our moon. When walking around the installation, the value changes from light to dark like the rising and falling of the sun. Whether the viewer’s perspective orbits around the piece or looks from a fixed place, the piece seems to convey a sense of stillness. A place out of place, frozen in display.
The series works together in exploring the concept of fragmented landscapes.