LANDSCAPES
2014
Exhibition view taken at Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian - CAM, Lisbon
Digital C-Print / framend / 150 x 110cm / 59 x 43,3inch
Landscape 1
Landscape 2
Landscape
3
Mountain
2014
exhibition view taken at Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian - CAM, Lisbon
digital C-Print on canvas / 400 x 300cm, 157 x 118inch
Mountain
exhibition
view taken at Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian - CAM, Lisbon
Landscape of Gregor Graf makes use of another method to contrast the illusion with the real. The photographs, from a series of three, evoke the visual universe of postcards from the first half of the twentieth century, when the colours were hand-painted and the resemblance to the reality was inevitably changed. From the questioning of what seems to be an ideal place, inherent to the imaginary contained in these postcards, Gregor Graf created unreal landscapes from real elements. In a process of superposition, combining and changing colour, the artist joined parts of photographs of different landscapes in the same image, resulting in a transcendence of reality as we know it.
In
the black and white mountain, of great contrasts and dimensions (Mountain 2013), Gregor Graf returns to creating, even more sharply, a sensation of transcendence. Provoking an internal, psychological experience, which is beyond the understanding of form, through one image, seems to be an impossible task. This photograph of a mountain, which starts at the floor and ends at the ceiling of the same wall is the perfect metaphor to translate the disquieting relationship between the human beeing and nature. The impetus to visually evoke the sublime, the emotionally overwelming experience of encountering something so vast, much greater than us and what we can understand, is as overpowering as it is terrifying, and has been interpreted by many artists over the years, such as Casper David Friedrich, James Turrell and J.M.W. Turner.
Text: Lusia Santos (curator)
Gregor Graf ... www.gregorgraf.net
...
2015