Broken Landscape III

Broken Landscape III

Dec 5, 2013–Feb 16, 2014

December 5, 2013 – February 16, 2014
Main & Middle Gallery

Featuring Blane de St. Croix

(SAN ANTONIO, TX) — Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum announces an exhibition by internationally recognized sculptor Blane de St. Croix, “Broken Landscapes III” from December 5, 2013 through February 16, 2014. An Opening Reception will take place Thursday, December 5 from 6:00 to 9:00 pm, and is open and free to the public.

Broken Landscape III is based on Blane De St. Croix’s travels along the length of the Mexico/United States border. Conducting research along the course of over 3,000 miles of fence construction, the artist visited fifteen border crossings, and spoke with people on both sides of the border communities (both geographically and ideologically speaking), including civilian residents, fence contractors, US border patrol and journalists.

Broken Landscape III reconstructs a selection of this border as a monumental miniaturized section of the border fence and surrounding landscape. The sculpture itself divides the space, acting as a border or barrier controlling the viewer. Referencing the historical genre of landscape painting, Broken Landscape III is a painstaking rendering of the land’s topography and its manufactured border.

About the Artist’s Work

Blane De St. Croix’s work explores the geopolitical landscape through sculpture, installation, and work on paper. His research based practice incorporates on the ground site visits, aerial fly-overs, photographic documentation, interviews, internet mining, and satellite imagery. Together, his artworks and research seek to facilitate an increased understanding of the shared social, political, environmental, and cultural climate challenges we face, both within our local communities, and in the international arena.

De St. Croix employs formal elements of sculpture such as scale (both miniaturized and massive) and perspective (forced and the separation of grounds). Each decision directs the spectator both conceptually and physically. His large sculptural installation work allows for architectural interaction/intervention with any given exhibition space and furthermore channels the audience into a particular position or pattern of viewing. Physicality and materiality are of utmost importance to the process, and all the elements within the work are crafted by hand, creating a more intimate and controllable result than by way of digital methods.

The work formally draws from the historical references of the landscape painting tradition and its accepted sublime beauty, but it is further interested in contemporary societies underlying ecological and political conflicts that uniquely frame the memory of the current landscape. It seeks to underscore the dualities of the beautiful and devastating elements, both natural and man-made, which precipitate environmental and cultural changes in the landscape, transcending nature and becoming symbolic of human kinds desire for control.

home

Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of the artist and (F.A.R.) Future Arts Research, Tempe, AZ.