I am fascinated by Landscape not as Place1 but as a construct. Complex and often contradictory, the Landscape2 is not natural, impartial, or objective but a construct imposed upon geology. Stories, legends, and myths are created from Place for many reasons, but all are subjective, frequently anthropomorphise, and have an agenda. Place becomes an idealized and utopic fiction, the stage for legend and myth. A singular Place transmutes into a multitude as people populate it with their own agendas and meanings; a mountain isn’t an impartial geological formation - a Place, but becomes the subjective, ranging from specific constructs to diverse and diffuse imaginings of broader cultural scope. We create the Landscape in which we live.

In creating these works, I attempt not to be bound by any dogma or singular tradition of Landscape. I produce images using archetypes which at first appear rational and plausible, but on inspection are utopias and fantasies both unreachable and irrational. Beyond the archetypes of mountain, tree, and sky, I also make use of horizons, pseudo-reflection, and fluid perspective, with many works having multiple axes with no one way “up” being absolute. Also, reference to humanities’ physical presence is absent from these works. In their aspect as expressions of deep time, the images remind us that we ourselves are transitory.

The work is simultaneously a play on imbuing the land with narratives and conversely, a fantasy where the disconcerting and untamed reigns; a wilderness that cannot be reached let lone subjugated. They are dramas of no constancy, of multiple axes and no certain ground, yet none the less, are anchored in collective experience.

Jason Cordero
September 2022

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1 Place (capitalised) refers to an objective, empirically definable location.

2 Landscape (capitalised) refers to a cultural construct, being a concept or narrative of Landscape, not geology.

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Join Jason Cordero for an Artist Talk and Tour of Superposition on Saturday 3 December at 12pm  RSVP