MATTHEW JENSEN – FEELS LIKE REAL
2015-06-15Drawn from several seminal projects Jensen has developed over the past six years, the photographs in Feels Like Real weave together ideas about travel, observation, ephemerality, and the landscape. Throughout, the artist acts as a patient observer, moving through the world both physically and virtually, toggling between low and high tech modes of engagement.
In the series The 49 States, Jensen embarked on a virtual road trip of America using Google Street View in its early and low-resolution days. Because there exists a near infinite number of views to be captured and stitched together to create each stateʼs representative landscape, what results is a synthesized view of small town America. Noting that “the sun used to be the only thing to touch the entire earth and now Google does as well,” Jensen chose only images in which the sun is shining directly into the cameras. He initiated the project at a time when the technological world was evolving exponentially but Hawaii had not yet been mapped. He has purposefully left this one state missing as an acknowledgement of the moment in time before all 50 U.S. states were represented on Google Street View.
Opposite – 14 Hour Sunset, Over the Alaskan Range, 2010
Exhibition runs through to June 20th, 2015
Yancey Richardson Gallery
525 West 22nd Street
New York
NY 10011
