SEAN LANDERS
2015-11-09Landers exhibits an homage to the Magritte’s Periode Vache with a continuing body of paintings depicting North American mammals—musk ox, elk, and caribou among them—each delicately coated in Scottish tartan.
Majestically posed within a shallow landscape, Landers fauna seem to exist within a diorama, his subjects trapped within a state of wild splendor and stasis. Their tartaned fur shimmers and moves like a protective blanket, shielding them from an eventual, presumable demise. Tartan, after all, is a system of tribal identification, a way to protect these animals “from indifference on their journey through time”, in Landers’ words.
Accompanying his animals are landscapes of aspen trees glowering warily at the audience from their dark and wintery rootings. Carved into their white bark are images and writing, both integral to Landers’ work since 1990. These humorous and poignant ruminations on the intertwined fates of an artwork and its maker reveal truths about what it means to be a sentient mortal being.
Opposite – Juvenile Caribou, 2015
Exhibition runs through to December 19th, 2015
Galerie Rodolphe Janssen
Rue de Livourne 35 Livornostraat
B-1050 Brussels
Belgium
www.galerierodolphejanssen.com
