Unseen Gazes in Desolate Landscape

»Review«

I love foggy, overcast days—they transform the world into a state of thrilling unreality, when the fog muffles all sounds except your own and somehow slows everything down a little, when the mist makes you believe you’re seeing things that don’t even exist. I have to admit, though, that these situations can be perceived very ambiguously and aren’t always just excitingly mysterious. On the contrary, they can be threatening and anxiety-inducing in many ways, depending on your individual state of mind and the environment you’re in. “Unseen gazes” captures this kind of threatening perception.

The work depicts an already surreal place on a foggy, overcast day—a stagnant pond with dead trees in a moorland landscape. On a bright sunny day, it would certainly be worth seeing and impressive, but when you’re standing alone by the water in the fog, it can feel entirely different. A feeling creeps in of being watched, a strange presence in the solitude, when the landscape blurs in the mist and it’s as if the landscape itself becomes the observer. And because landscapes can’t actually watch, the observer takes on human characteristics. In such moments, the boundary between animate and inanimate nature seems to dissolve. Every withered tree stump could be a figure, every movement in the corner of your eye makes you flinch. The pond lies still and dark.

Paradoxically, it’s precisely the obvious absence of life—the dead trees, the murky water, the silence—that creates an intense sensation of presence.