Julius von Bismarck
Landscape Painting (Jungle)
2015

HD Video, 23min
Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Landscape Painting shows painted landscapes—a desert scene with cacti and rocks and a jungle scenario. The artist traveled to two locations in Mexico, where he selected an appropriate segment of land and organized a team of local helpers. He paid these helpers to first paint the landscape white and then to overpaint the landscape again in its original colors with acrylic paint. These painters reconstructed the colors of their local surroundings from memory. The photographs resulting from this intervention are composed of multiple detail views and thus result in extremely high-resolution images (> 400 MPx). Upon closer examination, one can find the layer of acrylic paint that covers leaves, thorns, sand, and other aspects of the landscape. Since only these surfaces are visible, essentially all that one sees is plastic in the form of an acrylic coat of paint. These two painting processes are each documented by thirty-minute videos. In the jungle, Maya Indians paint various green tones onto the whitened environment, leaf by leaf. In the desert, local agricultural workers paint the stony cactus-covered landscape over a period of seven days.

About Julius von Bismarck

In his works Julius von Bismarck explores people’s ability to perceive, and he uses the laws of physics to challenge the way we are used to seeing things.

Other Artworks by Julius von Bismarck

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