Julius von Bismarck: Landscape Painting

Primarily concerned with the intersection between nature and culture, Julius von Bismarck engages the tradition of landscape painting by, quite literally, painting the landscape.

In the remote Mexican desert, the artist and a crew of local workers first covered a vista of rocks, earth and cacti in white paint, and then proceeded to realistically repaint it in its original colors from memory.

The process becomes fodder for a poetic documentary-style video and the resulting “painting” the subject of a large-scale digital photograph. This action was repeated in the jungle, in collaboration with Maya painters, and makes up the other half of the video projection on display.

Landscape Painting is a continuation of UMOCA’s 2018 theme of exploring the concept of landscape as it relates not only to an art historical genre, but also topics of natural vs artifice, land use and ownership in the desert west, and the innate human drive to tame the wild.