Quoting from Malin’s artist statement, “Why is it so seductive…to change something that doesn’t need changing?” Malin started this exhibit with an exacto knife and a point: we as people attempt to control nature with fences and crops. This time Lynn decided to rip apart previously painted works, once imbued in sunlit prairie scenes and now blended together as a bird’s eye patchwork of natural contours and man-made fences. Each painting is also held in a box that lights up when you walk past, illuminating and capturing the raw imagery of the Edmonton potpourri prairies.
At the back of the room the projected shadow of a plastic tree swaying softly in the wind stands tall. To the left a text to Tom Thomson explains how all trees are now plastic. "Texting Tom" articulates Beauchamp’s view of natures' battle against the elements with the reference of Jack Pine (which struggled against rock and wind to find it’s perch) by Tom Thomson by using the shadow of a plastic tree to inform us of what our future may be. The text is written in a very naïve tone and creates a total acceptance to the fact that nature has been replaced by plastic.
Working together Malin mocks the boundaries of human control over nature and Beauchamp warns us of what’s to come if we don’t let up our grip. Malin’s zig zag maps of cultivated land unfolds the truth that the natural setting of what Edmonton looked like before the settlers arrived no longer exists. With each new development and each new passage, we are moving closer to living in plastic land.
Image credit: Lynn Malin, 2008
- E.C. Edmonton
No comments:
Post a Comment