Terre Sauvage: The Topology of Anamnesis

Curated by Maralynn Cherry

John Climenhage’s engaging new landscape works draw from the practice of plein air field painting. Back in the studio, bold strokes lifted from the landscape translate into a fusion of multiple views and memories. Landscape painting becomes a transposed internal archive as Climenhage distills source material into infolded spatial consequences. Through the process of painting he creates new tableau devices where scenes gleaned from the wilderness become sensorial ‘theatres of memory’ set in motion. Cloud and sky overtake floating islands where earth itself supplants the canoe as vessel. In many of Climenhage’s paintings, picturing breaks loose from its grounding and scenes appear framed or caught within ephemeral spaces. The act of painting and remembering sets perspective outside the normal reading of gravity as a recognizable field. Here, the elements recollected are caught in a continuum of folding and unfolding horizons. Geographical locations, water, sky, rock, forest, islands and shorelines no longer seems as grounded in what we know. Rather, Climenhage presents us with new territorial translations of one’s journey through the wilderness.

This exhibition is supported by a publication: Terre Sauvage: The Topology of Anamnesis Catalogue