New Landscapes
Photographer Adrian gaut's latest body of work, new landscapes, explores his long standing fascination with pattern based pictorial representation. He traces his inspiration to the tradition of "all-over" pictures (a term coined by the seminal critic Clement Greenberg) pioneered by the abstract expressionist painters of the 1950's such as jackson pollock and janet Sobel.
Specifically avoiding overbearing compositional devices, the photographs, rather arrempt to subvert the perception of scale and obfuscate the subject, prompting a re-evaluation of the landscape on it's own terms.
Entropy, the inevitable degradation of higher order into a state of disorder, is a theme that underlies all of the works in the exhibition. The three photographs included from the series Wave action, are the most pure expression of entropy at work. We see the action of a breaking wave creating a perfect randomness, an orderly pulse of energy broken into innumerable smaller pulses interacting with each other in unpredictable, imperfect ways.
It is precisely this randomness that appeals to Gaut, the photographs a witness and their creator merely an observer.
To a lesser degree, the same impulse is at work in the two photographs from the large landscape series, although the focus here is more predominately one of scale. drawing from the work Mendelbrot and his work with fractal geometry, the underlying architecture of the natural world, which could be loosely defined in terms of scale: the smallest element echoing that of the largest. These photographs, also attempt to obscure the viewers perception of scale. Representing largely featureless landscapes, one is at a loss to define with any certainty exactly how much is being seen. Are we viewing a small valley or a vast expanse of desert? The fact that we don't know is exactly the point. Here again, there is a debt to the work of Pollock, whose work was highly fractal.
The final pieces in the exhibition, two works from the series Manufactured landscapes, are the least traditional landscaoes included, yet they too are an investigation into entropy and randomness, inescapable despite our intentions otherwise.
Taken as a whole, the exhibition attempts to chart a new direction in landscape photography, avoiding the clichés of majestic views and sublime sunsets, instead focusing on the underlying forces at work througout the natural world. Finding beauty in the marginalized landscape, Gaut has arrived at a truly unique interpretation of landscape, and our role within those landscapes.