UNSETTLED LANDSCAPES 2013 / 15

residency at SANTA FE ART INSTITUTE, New Mexico, USA 2013 and follow up studio based works in Berlin 2013 / 15 as paintings and as site specific concepts relying on the photographic research during the residency.

solo exhibition at SOMOS Berlin 2015

https://www.somos-arts.org/unsettled-landscapes/

NOT EVERY LANDSCAPE IS OF CAPITAL MEANS

(but without means there is no property)

concept for a wall size installation photography

 As the film of John Ford "The Searchers" with its cliché of John Wayne ́s male role model is still existent to some degree, the real landscape of the American Southwest and its land-rights and property policy is still based on treaties and negotiations of the 19th century and its civil war. How is landscape abused today with its property and sales management? How has property management failed and led financial speculation into current crisis of land, land-use and property? A photographic wall size installation of photos recorded at first nation reservation of Acoma and at the town of Madrid in New Mexico during 2013, to be installed as a wall size installation minimum 200 x 600 cm, combining pigment print on high resolution paper with projection and other materials.

2015

UNSETTLED LANDSCAPES

on land-use and resources

of the North American South West

by Klaus Hu

at Somos Art Space Berlin

solo exhibition

prices of available works as .pdf for download

via google.drive

UNSETTLED LANDSCAPES

new works by Klaus Hu / photography / painting

on land-use and resources

Landscape and conflicts of the North American South West.

Historical and experienced landscapes. Photographs as negative b/w and digital images of the residence stay at Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico, USA in March / April 2013 are juxtaposed with PAINTED TRANSLATIONS of photographic recordings (and archival photos) while on stay and in my Studio in Berlin. The landscape of the North American South West appears as an ambient room as visual language of lived time. As visual translation, opposites merge into a symbiosis. Do I imagine landscape or does landscape reflect on me? Is landscape a romantic topic of escape, "inspired" by infinity or is it an ecological disaster? While landscape was subject to the will and spirit of the late baroque period in European tradition and degraded to geometric alignments of the nobility, the romantic period of the 19th century projected the "soul" of the author / artist on / into the canvas, and thus into / onto the real landscape. Sometimes landscape disappeared as a longing as in Caspar David Friedrichs paintings. At the beginning of the 20th Century modernity opens the bridge to non-European traditions, without examining in detail the various notions of landscape, the self, the projection, the ritual and transformation. Only the ignition of the first Atomic bomb in 1945 in New Mexico threw an image on the dichotomy of dissolution versus unity (of the self). The result was the counter-movement and the awakening of the 60's generation. But everything vanished into a daydream. Another 40 years later, after several financial and ecological crises and disasters, the exploitation of resources by transnational corporations, wars of intervention, after 9/11, looking at "LANDSCAPE" is not a marginal subject any more. It is part of the Anthropocene and the discourse upon geological changes by human interventions on a global local scale.

interview via Yale University Radio with Brainard Carey

about UNSETTTLED LANDSCAPES

alumni page at SFAI

UNSETTLED LANDSCAPES

installation views / at SomoS Berlin / May 2015

all photos / works © KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

UNSETTLED LANDSCAPES

oil on canvas 200 x 140 cm

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

(inspired by photographs of Timothy O´Sullivan 1872 / 74)

details

update 2022

Photos appropriated of Timothy O´Sullivan of 1872 / 74 of survey expeditions as embedded photographer towards West … its blood spilled (of American natives and their land) echo in current wars on resources of consumer filled societies. It does not speak of gender / identity...it speaks of land and of wars fought for profit...only...and of beauty of the land encountered....

This ambiguity along the repainted photos of historical landscape of the South West by Klaus Hu in 2014 as a vertical tableau and its composition as chess pattern laid the ground, and gave its name for the whole work series of 2013 15. Mostly large scale oil on canvas, charcoals on (stonehenge) paper and small scale works, including the photographic research by Klaus Hu of 2013, while on residency at Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico, US. Two sets of the photographic research are available as print editions.

UNSETTLED LANDSCAPES had been first presented at SOMOS Berlin as exhibition in 2015.

Two adjacent books / hardcover are available as print on demand:

1. NEW MEXICAN TRAVELS, photography (2013)

2. SPIRAL JETTY, ACOMA, MADRID, BANDELIER, photography (2014)

the paintings are included in the chronological survey book / hardcover

3. PAINTING 2006 / 2019 by KLAUS HU see > Books & editions

submission for

The Billboard LOS ANGELES

Creative's Annual Billboard

Exhibition 2021

DON´T ESCAPE !

layout / photo: © KLAUS HU 2013 / 21

source photo billboard : courtesy LOS ANGELES 

Creative's Annual Billboard Exhibition 2020

HOW TO TRANSCEND

A POOL IN SPACE
oil on canvas 195 x 210 cm

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

for spatial / site-specific installation   is referring to spatiotemporal/political and economic/ecological conflicts about water-rights, that will be addressing the future locally and globally. How the pool may be transcended poses ironically the question, if economy and science with its materialistic and capitalistic approach are still capable of solving these conflicts. Its reference to land-art projects of the 60´s and 70´s implies its permanent urgency as installation.

NEW MEXICAN TRAVELS /
WHITE SANDS IV

oil on canvas 120 x 140 cm

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

ACOMA / PHOENIX /

PARKING SPOT

oil on canvas 120 x 140 cm

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

SPIRALS

& BLUE WALLS

gouache on Stonehenge

framed 66 x 86 cm

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

TUMBLEWEEDS

& DUSTDEVILS

gouache, pencil on Stonehenge

framed 66 x 86 cm

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

WHITE SANDS I - III

ensemble
charcoal / oil on Stonehenge paper
framed maple black / glass
each 106 x 135,5 cm
ensemble 318 x 135,5 cm / 106 x 406,5 cm
(variable hanging vertical horizontal)
each 96 x 126 cm (paper format)

produced during residency at Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico, USA, 2013

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

I
Moby is spiralling
Playing along the Pequod
Voices (of time) bubbling
Deep into Hubble´s universe
Entropy
 
II
Connaitre et savoir
The mailboxes of the students
Rosetta connection
Acoma - Galisteo - Trinity
Roswell for fun
 
III
Disconnected - reconnected
Morning - awakening
The fishes inside the pond
Cafeteria is closed for distinctive times only

 NEW MEXICAN TRAVELS

ACOMA / PHOENIX
each 8 1/2 x 11"archival prints on Museum Etching 350 g / framed

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

BANDELIER
archival prints on Hahnemuehlen fine art pearl
each 8 1/2 x 11" / framed

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

WHITE SANDS I - III
ensemble
charcoal / oil on Stonehenge paper
framed maple black / glass
each 106 x 135,5 cm
ensemble 318 x 135,5 cm / 106 x 406,5 cm
(variable hanging vertical horizontal)
each 96 x 126 cm (paper format)

produced during residency at Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico, USA, 2013
© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

WHITE SANDS I - III

produced during residency at Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico, USA, 2013

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

BANDELIER
archival prints on Hahnemuehlen fine art pearl
each 8 1/2 x 11"

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

NEW MEXICAN TRAVELS /

WHITE SANDS IV
oil on canvas 120 x 140 cm  

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

ACOMA / PHOENIX /

PARKING SPOT
oil on canvas 120 x 140 cm

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

 NEW MEXICAN TRAVELS

ACOMA / PHOENIX
each 8 1/2 x 11"archival prints on Museum Etching 350 g

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

HOW TO TRANSCEND

A POOL IN SPACE
oil on canvas 195 x 210 cm

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

 NEW MEXICAN TRAVELS

ACOMA / PHOENIX
each 8 1/2 x 11"archival prints on Museum Etching 350 g

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

HOW TO TRANSCEND

A POOL IN SPACE
oil on canvas 195 x 210 cm

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

UNSETTLED LANDSCAPES

oil on canvas 200 x 140 cm

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

NEW MEXICAN TRAVELS

Book hardcover

available from Sept 2013 on

8 1/2" x 11" / 100 pages / 116 photos

70 € / includ. VAT / MwSt

plus costs for shipping

details via BOOKS

photographic research
into the vast expansive landscape of New Mexico, USA,

made possible during residence stay
at Santa Fe Art Institute

in March / April 2013.

all photos © KLAUS HU 2013

except page 57 courtesy Derrick Velasquez

and page 56 courtesy Georgia O`Keeffe Museum

& New Mexico Museum Of Art

"The motorbike of Georgia O ́Keeffe"

While site-specific attempts were lingering in the back of my mind, recalling Nancy Holt, Robert Smithson and Bruce Nauman, I experienced a slow, but vast expansive landscape, full of contradictions and full of colonial and cultural clashes, that emptied my mind and my eyes from pre-conceptions, making me drive out into the unknown, while on stay. What I experienced was a mix of reservations, clinging to casino build resorts for income, the hispanic community living side by side of the old Spanish settlers and their descendants, all reclaiming own territories and land, while some towns of the 60 ́s communities are driven to tourism and real estate sales. New Mexico is the state of the first atomic bomb explosion and of dry high altitude with mountains, valleys and resorts. Being on my own, I enjoyed a photographic research, that can be called an artists journey, discovering a vast expansive landscape, beauty and its conflicts on resources and historic battles for water and land.

SPIRAL JETTY ACOMA MADRID BANDELIER

Book hardcover

2014 / 2015

8 1/2" x 11" / 60 pages / 33 photos

60 € / includ. VAT / MwSt

plus costs for shipping

details via BOOKS

photos © KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

2 editions on hahnemuehle fine art pearl

SPIRAL JETTY

ACOMA MADRID BANDELIER 2013/15

each digital print 21 x 29,7 cm

edition 1/1

SPIRAL JETTY boxed set / 12 prints

ACOMA MADRID BANDELIER boxed set / 15 prints

photos © KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

further available: edition 1/1

MARS_SPIRIT, ED 1/1, 2010

18 pigment prints, each 63 x 112 cm

on hahnemuehle fine art pearl

photos additional courtesy NASA / JPL-CALTECH

printed 2010 by KLAUS HU

ART & ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
Wednesday, 20th of May / 7 PM / 19 Uhr 
in conversation with: Prof. Dr. Miranda Schreurs
 
 
ARTIST TALK & SCREENINGS
Thursday, 14th of May / 8 PM / 20 Uhr

FILM / SCREENINGS

MARS_SPIRIT, 2009/12, 5.18 min

a fictional reflection about the escapist landscape of Mars.

source images courtesy NASA / JPL Caltech

voiceover: Christopher Johnson

text excerpt: by Peter Allen "2035" editing © Klaus Hu 2013

UNSETTLED LANDSCAPES keynote 2015, 35 min
keynote on land-use and resources of the North American South-West.

photos / texts / editing © Klaus Hu 2015

additional courtesy: Timothy O Sullivan courtesy Library of Congress

High Desert Test Site © Andrea Zittel

books © the writers / authors

research photos / re. uranium tailings courtesy Center For Land Use

State of Mind, New California Conceptual Art ca 1970,

courtesy University of California Press, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive

BANDELIER 2013, 4.25 min

site-visit of the archeological site in New Mexico, USA near Los Alamos Labs.

photos / editing © Klaus Hu 2013/15

ACOMA 2013, 4.24 min

site-visit of the first nation reservation in New Mexico, USA near Grants.

photos / editing © Klaus Hu 2013/15

SPIRAL JETTY, 2013/14, 5.57 min

site-visit of the iconic land-art work SPIRAL JETTY by Robert Smithson, 1969/70

at Salt Lake, near Salt Lake City, Utah, USA , 2013

photos / editing © Klaus Hu 2013/15

ALL IMAGES / WORKS © KLAUS HU 2013/15

& VG BILD-KUNST BONN

video keynote presented during the exhibition 2015

UNSETTLED LANDSCAPES 2015

as text / paper pdf

UNSETTLED LANDSCAPES 2015 / ON MAPS 2012/13 / paper

video keynote presented at Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico, USA, 2013

ON LANDSCAPE THE ARCHIVE AND ESCAPE

Literary research archive for UNSETTLED LANDSCAPES 2013/15

1: JEFFREY KASTNER / BRIAN WALLIS > Land & Environmental Art

2: ROBERT ADAMS > The Place We Live

3: JUDY PASTERNAK > Yellow Dirt

4: DANIEL MCCOOL > Native Waters

5: V.B.PRICE > The Orphaned Land

6: LUCY R. LIPPARD > Undermining

7: ROBERT SMITHSON > Collected Writings

8: TIMOTHY O´SULLIVAN >

Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library Duke University,

Durham, North Carolina

9: CLUI / CENTER FOR LANDUSE INTERPRETATION

> On Radioactive Disposal Cells Within The US

10: GOOGLE EARTH IMAGES

> Uranium Disposal Cells of America

> Radioactive Disposal Sites In The USA

___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

following 3 photos by Timothy O`Sullivan 1873

Incredible: Tents can be seen (bottom, centre) at a point known as Camp Beauty close to canyon walls in Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona. Photographed in 1873 and situated in northeastern Arizona, the area is one of the longest continuously inhabited landscapes in North American and holds preserved ruins of early indigenous people's such as The Anasazi and Navajo.

Settlement: View of the White House, Ancestral Pueblo Native American (Anasazi) ruins in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, in 1873. The cliff dwellings were built by the Anasazi more than 500 years earlier. At the bottom, men stand and pose on cliff dwellings in a niche and on ruins on the canyon floor. Climbing ropes connect the groups of men. Anthropologists and archeologists place the Anasazi peoples of Native American culture on the continent from the 12th Century BC. Their unique architecture incorporated 'Great Houses' which averaged up to 200 rooms and could take in up to 700 people.

Rocky: The south side of Inscription Rock (now El Morro National Monument), in New Mexico in 1873. The prominent feature stands near a small pool of water, and has been a resting place for travellers for centuries. Since at least the 17th century, natives, Europeans, and later American pioneers carved names and messages into the rock face as they paused. In 1906, a law was passed, prohibiting further carving.

photos courtesy

TIMOTHY O´SULLIVAN

Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

following photos courtesy CLUI
(Center for Land Use Interpretation)
on radioactive disposal cells within the US

view via >

CENTER FOR LANDUSE INTERPRETATION

LOS ALAMOS
oil on canvas 120 x 140 cm

© KLAUS HU 2013 / 15 & VG BILD-KUNST BONN

concept for an installation / tbc

following photos courtesy google earth

Nevada test sites

SANTA FE ART INSTITUTE

residency

March / April 2013

DIARY

While site-specific attempts are lingering in the back of my mind, recalling Nancy Holt, Robert Smithson and Bruce Nauman, I experience a slow, but vast expansive landscape, full of contradictions and full of colonial and cultural clashes, that empty my mind and my eyes from pre-conceptions, making me drive out into the unknown, while on stay. What I experience, is a mix of reservations, clinging to casino build resorts for income, the hispanic community living side by side of the old spanish settlers and their decedent followers, all reclaiming own territories and land, while some towns of the 60´s communities are driven to tourism and real estate sales.

a parable line of former resident / after rain

ACOMA, MADRID, BANDELIER

I took the car, hit the road and entered the expansive landscape, that despite its beauty, also carries clashes of waste and destruction, of uranium and water resources, of mining and of lost dreams of the 60´s, transformed into tourist destinations. Sure, later I discovered the photos of Anselm Adams and Timothy O Sullivan, of the early geological survey expeditions towards West.

ACOMA

Driving out to Acoma, high Mesa, oldest American town alive. Sometimes its better just to drive out. "Dakota", the tour guide, insisted, that solar energy is against "our" religious believes. Never heard of that...on my question why still using propane gas for heating. The night before, I had found a last section of route 66 for taking an overnight at "Grants”, an old uranium mining town.

MADRID / GALISTEO

Riding out to Madrid, Galisteo and the vast expansive desert. (A school bus driver showed me the way). Now I imagine, why Bruce Nauman, Lucy Lippard and Nancy Holt have their homes here.

BANDELIER

Driving up a long and winding route to the "Enemy-ancestors", which the Navajo would call Anaasází. Passing by Pojoaque and its casino build resort, I enter the rocky volcano made land - tuff - compressed by million of years. After some miles of a curvy and cliffy road, I reach the National Monument Park, follow the path along the excavated ruins, along the former communal round house, climb up stairs, while the lungs are already exhausted by the high air pressure. The caves, small in size, nearly indistinguishable from the water made cracks and voids inside the cliffs are looking like a Swiss cheese. As the wind is moving through the canyon, the silence is filled with a sound made by the gods, reminding to cars passing by on a distant highway. I end up hiking towards the ceremonial cave. In vain. I´m exhausted and enjoy the silence, only haunted by the soft howling by the winds.

how to get there:

at Bandelier Monument Site - take 285/84 north of Santa Fe - then cross Pojoaque - then West NM 502 - then enter NM 4.

The word Anaasází is Navajo for "Ancient Ones" or "Ancient Enemy". [3] Archaeologists still debate when this distinct culture emerged. The current consensus, based on terminology defined by the Pecos Classification, suggests their emergence around the 12th century BCE, during the archaeologically designated Early Basketmaker II Era. Beginning with the earliest explorations and excavations, researchers wrote that the Ancient Puebloans are ancestors of contemporary Pueblo people. [1][3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Pueblo_Peoples

ARRIVAL SANTA FE

3rd of March.

Slowly attaching to the dry high desert climate. So, don´t walk & smoke! There are multiple pathes to Robert Smithson´s "Jetty" to be seen at the moment: in Anne Leibowitz´ show "Pilgrimage" here in Santa Fe - also Tacita Dean is reworking the not found Jetty during the 90´s, now at Arcadia University Art Gallery - till April 21th, titled "JG" - on JG Ballard and Robert Smithson. If smoking a cigarette - feeling dizzy, while walking.I found my thrills / hat in Santa Fe at Suzy´s at railyard. A coyote crossed the Campus last night, while heading to Meowulf.

A fictitious dialogue with Nancy Holt,

approx 10 - 15 min / b/w, static on terrace in Galisteo.

 1. What brought you here?

 The invitation on Maps and mapping and my previous work, I guess. My interest in Robert Smithson since 2001 and his obsession with landscape, fiction and industrial ruins .... and his collected appendix of fiction / nonfiction, he collected in his library.

2. How was your relation to him?

Robert Smithson seemed to be all the time "ON-LINE". His imagination along his projects seemed borderless, sometimes correlating, sometimes confronting my female perspective on things. It has been like a "RUN-THROUGH" or constant "RUN-DOWN", like one of his projects. Always imagining structures of existing and non-existing relations between constellations and landscape and the books he was reading meanwhile. And he needed that perspective as well.

3. Did he imagine his projects to be seen by alien visitors in a far future distance, who discover the left-overs of humankind, wondering about the mysterious ruins of a species long ago having faded?

 4. May-be yes and no. He didn´t care much about reception and critical feedback - he cared about conflict of being - and how calculus would interact - and then project his ideas of unforeseen re-combinations onto it. I don´t think, he cared much about alien visitors, although he liked science-fiction. In books and in films.

 5. Did you have to emancipate from his visions, or has it been more like a collaboration?

What was your role in it? And what was your favorite book you had in common with him?

 6. Referencing Michael Heizer, for example, who blew up the idea of land-art, of site, and of territory into a gigantic sculpture with enormous funding. Nobody will know, if it ever will open. A negative aspect, how land-art has developed, an aspect of american spirit. In contrast, James Turrell, who also realized his dream of Roden Crater, always returned to either "light spaces" for museums or to small scale projects for commissions.