Douglas Mandry |
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The work of visual artist Douglas Mandry (CH, 1989) includes photography, video, sculpture and installation. He works multidisciplinary and often closely collaborates with earth scientists.
Mandry’s reflections on landscape and its material elements ask what the sublime—that fascinating mixture of horror and beauty—could mean today. Is the sublime still possible in an era of sophisticated technologies and ecological disruptions, that are collapsing any presumed safe distance between mankind and nature? By letting his images interfere with natural elements like ice or dust, Mandry shows that matter matters. This approach has consequences, too, for outdated notions of the romantic genius, the ultimate author to the detriment of others, especially non-human agents. For Mandry, the artist is rather an agent or vector, co-creating with what shapes and materials are giving themselves. He is the ‘connection point that evolves in fluent ways with what you receive’. Following this, the sublime might be more about ‘being impressed’ rather than ‘to impress’, about feeling rather than seeing. Mandry loves the beauty of the unfinished. He doesn’t create standalone images as much as he slowly works on serial works and constellations, that might take many forms, akin to his working method of sampling existing things and assembling them together. He wants to break down reality and present it in alternative, non-linear ways, because “reality,” in his own words, “is quickly catching up with science-fiction.” —Taco Hidde Bakker |
