Terraform
Science fiction landscape paintings at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. 2018-2019
Terraform (Hematite Displacement), 2018, Pigment and acrylic polymer resin on canvas, 28 by 43 in︎︎︎ DOWNLOAD PDF FLYER with Essay by Claire Lehmann
Press Release
Mitchell-Innes
& Nash is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by
Daniel Lefcourt at the gallery’s Chelsea location at 534 West 26th
Street. Titled Terraform, this will be the artist’s second solo
exhibition with the gallery and will feature a set of eight large-scale
paintings.
Throughout his career,
Lefcourt has engaged painting through the lens of scientific,
industrial and military imaging technologies. For his latest work, he
has created a set of paintings each depicting an abstract landscape seen
from an aerial perspective. The landscapes do not describe real places,
but are generated by staining the canvas and then tracing the stains
using algorithmically plotted lines. Sometimes the line drawings are
map-like or diagrammatic; in other instances, landforms are described
using hatching and linear perspective. The paintings speak to a history
of art derived from computation and indeterminacy. A history that
includes the generative systems of the artist Hanne Darboven and the
parametric musical scores of Iannis Xenakis.
The
aerial view is of interest to Lefcourt because it is a particularly
modern and technological vantage. It is also a gendered perspective. It
correlates with masculine fantasies of dominance, as well as
metaphysical and technological omnipotence. The bird’s-eye view in the
paintings bring to mind drone footage from America’s global military
operations, satellite data of melting glaciers, and the camera movement
in contemporary video games.
Borrowing
a popular term from science fiction, the title of the exhibition,
Terraform, alludes to the influence of authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin
and Kim Stanley Robinson. The authors’ respective works broach the
economic and environmental consequences of our current socio-political
landscape by constructing elaborate fictional worlds. Likewise,
Lefcourt’s paintings offer a vehicle by which we might think on a
geological scale, reflect on our current condition, and imagine other
possible futures
