Landscape and romantic topology: Emily Shanahan- Forest for the Trees

This exhibition uses the geometric form as a simile for synthetic forms as contrasting with natural organic forms. "Shaped tree","Prism" and "Horse Skull and Yellow Flowers" all share a tetrahedral shape as central to their composition.

"...removing the image from a credible context in Shaped Tree, the white, leafless tree floats in a space that remains undefined as either an interior or exterior environment."

-from Forest for the Trees artist statement

...an imaginary effect concealing that reality no more exists outside than inside the bounds of the artificial perimeter...How to feign a violation and put it to the test? Go and simulate a theft in a large department store: how do you convince the security guards that it is a simulated theft? There is no "objective" difference: the same gestures and the same signs exist as for a real theft; in fact the signs incline neither to one side nor the other. As far as the established order is concerned, they are always of the order of the real.

-taken from Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), pp.166-184http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html downlowded 10 April,2008

"These works address the relationship between natural and artificial constructions, specifically within the context of landscape and still life painting."

-from Forest for the Trees artist's statement

Shanahan's work attempts to address the portrayal of the natural world by at once using an almost surreal deconstruction of images of trees, birds, flowers and skulls. The recurrent theme of the tetrahedron suggests a metaphor for modern physical science as a trope for nature. Yet all these images occcur within the symbolic realm of the hyperreal. Forest for the Trees becomes another element in a symbolic reality. While it does not explicitly reference electronic media, it occurs within the context of a audience who is as aware of landscape as framed in the television and video game as is experienced by walking through a field. Indeed, the reorganisation of perceived natural images become par excellence the simulcra of Baudrillard's hypereallity. The relative banality of these subjects do become unsettling because of their displacement from a perceived natural order, yet they also serve to comfort the audience with a familiar in an increasingly disoriented perceptual envitronment.

A human figure appears in three works; "Nightingale", "girl with ribbons" and "Cold weather".The sentimental quality of these works seem disconnected from the received themes of the exhibition. As a romantic trope this creates an unfocussed statement. A cloud of notions infuse this exhibition about the portrayal of landscape in an increasingly hyperreal culture.

Forest for the Trees at Room and Board Gallery 372 Ste.Catherine west Suite 427, Montréal, QC until 12 April, 2008.