By: Sarah Kershaw
On the coldest day of the year, being shunted back and forth by tardy dignitaries, I viewed the exhibition Fragments of Modernity tucked up on the mezzanine level of the German Consulate. Landa’s images consist of one image superimposed over another, this is achieved by double exposures, not Photoshop, and one of her favorite motifs is our very own New York City and Times Square in particular.
In superimposing these iconic images of the city with other, often isolated figures, Landa wants to draw our attention to the fragmentation of our lives. Although the city is, some might say, hardly a novel subject, the idea behind her consistent use of Times Square for example, is initially thought-provoking: the sheer scale of the media screens, feeding us constant news quite literally dwarves the individuals below, scurrying about their business. Landa wants us to think about our ever-increasing reliance on technology, which the artist believes puts us at risk of losing touch with natural forms and rhythms. To keep to the ‘big’ themes of the human condition, she chucks in a few Christian images too, so we are confronted with the odd pieta and statues of Mary, in amongst all of the chaos and hubbub of New York. Many of the Christian images come from the many churches within walking distance of
However, removing my rubber clown suit of negativity for one moment, one image struck me as being more successful than the rest: that of two toucans, framed in an unnatural foggy light, vying for our attention with the classic ‘42nd street’ sign of white lights looming out at the viewer at the bottom right of the picture. The contrast between natural and manmade is clear but the two images combined produce what the artist calls ‘the happy accident’ of her work and the end result effortlessly captures that unsettling feeling of seeing two worlds cobbled together into one pictorial plane when they have no business being side-by-side.
In researching more about the artist, I chanced across her website and her output is certainly prolific and varied in medium however, this seems to me to be where the interesting becomes diluted and the insightful becomes obvious. The recurring Christian motifs in her work also leave little to the imagination. Her inspiration is the art of the 1350s depicting scenes from Christ’s life as found in the Bible. From this arcane source, Landa claims that she wanted to comment on how the characters in the biblical stories have become separate from the stories themselves and are now recognized worldwide by anyone, religious or otherwise. Landa links this theme with her current work claiming that mankind is at a similar stage of fragmentation and the bustle of New York is her evidence. Reader, are you confused yet? The connection between mid 14th Century religious art and modern life is tenuous at best and the photographs in the exhibition do not fill in the considerable philosophical gap sufficiently to link it all together.
To summarize, the use of New York City, fairgrounds, religious statuary and individuals as imagery strikes me as being a little bit clumsy and obvious and rather like album artwork from the 1990s. However if these images still resonate for you, stick some Massive Attack on your iPod and head over to the Consulate. If your penchant for 1990s album artwork was sated by the decade itself, give it a miss and instead spend some time in front of the huge George Baselitz painting hanging in the main reception area.
Fragments of Modernity runs through February 5th
The German House Gallery
The German Consulate, 871 United Nations Plaza (Between 49 and 48th Streets)
Take the 6 train to
Exhibition open: M – F, 9 – 5:00pm
Exhibition website: http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/__PR/GKs/NEWY/2009/01/14__Landa,archiveCtx=1998824.html
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