Emma Webster: Arcadia
Diane Rosenstein Gallery is happy to announce Arcadia, a solo exhibition of new paintings by British-American artist, Emma Webster. The artist will present fifteen oil paintings completed during a recent residency at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen. For her first solo show with the gallery, Webster transforms idyllic landscapes into theatrical still lifes.
Emma Webster first constructs intricate dioramas of collaged samples from historic paintings (from Bosch to Bierstadt). These maquettes evoke set design with backdrops staged and lit for each work. Scale shifts conflate the panoramic with the miniature, and the dioramas are a pastiche of idylls. In these operatic and thrilling paintings, nature is fraught with artifice. The animals are clay figurines. The foliage is plastic. Lighting comes from a flashlight. The entire view is straightforward, giving a clear vantage point. The artist鈥檚 hand is evident, fabricating an idealized scene that speaks to her desire to build one鈥檚 own world: an Arcadia.
The show鈥檚 title Arcadia alludes to recycled and reassembled notions of nature and art passed down from antiquity. These fake bucolics, where each tree is as much a reflection of its maker鈥檚 hands as it is a symbol, point to the ways humanity manipulates nature, seeing nature only as it relates to mankind itself. As in garden design, man contrives his own aesthetic of 鈥渘atural鈥� beauty despite the existence of another untamed and unpredictable reality. Considering climate change and deforestation, Emma Webster鈥檚 landscape as still life rings a warning.
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Diane Rosenstein Gallery is happy to announce Arcadia, a solo exhibition of new paintings by British-American artist, Emma Webster. The artist will present fifteen oil paintings completed during a recent residency at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen. For her first solo show with the gallery, Webster transforms idyllic landscapes into theatrical still lifes.
Emma Webster first constructs intricate dioramas of collaged samples from historic paintings (from Bosch to Bierstadt). These maquettes evoke set design with backdrops staged and lit for each work. Scale shifts conflate the panoramic with the miniature, and the dioramas are a pastiche of idylls. In these operatic and thrilling paintings, nature is fraught with artifice. The animals are clay figurines. The foliage is plastic. Lighting comes from a flashlight. The entire view is straightforward, giving a clear vantage point. The artist鈥檚 hand is evident, fabricating an idealized scene that speaks to her desire to build one鈥檚 own world: an Arcadia.
The show鈥檚 title Arcadia alludes to recycled and reassembled notions of nature and art passed down from antiquity. These fake bucolics, where each tree is as much a reflection of its maker鈥檚 hands as it is a symbol, point to the ways humanity manipulates nature, seeing nature only as it relates to mankind itself. As in garden design, man contrives his own aesthetic of 鈥渘atural鈥� beauty despite the existence of another untamed and unpredictable reality. Considering climate change and deforestation, Emma Webster鈥檚 landscape as still life rings a warning.
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