Can't see the forest for the trees? Luminous and almost psychedelic spectral qualities usually invisible to the naked eye are brought forth by the use of ultraviolet light on fluorescent pigments embedded in a painted landscape that wraps around the walls of the installation.
A programmed light cycle sets the painted subject into motion, creating a mimesis of dusk and dawn. This unfolding of light replicates the sense of afterglow that occurs at a specific moment of dusk - a theatrical moment that painters of the Hudson River School often sought to capture in their quest for the sublime.
This installation was initially created for the Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art (HVMoCA/HVCCA), located along the scenic Hudson River, after which America's first artistic fraternity of 19th Century, New York City-based landscape painters was named.
The temporal changes which set the painted landscape (usually static) into motion, also create a kind of "motion" painting/picture or moving image. By conflating temporal and static image in this way, the plasticity of archetype is revealed as it emerges over time to serve different political and economic interests.
Although landscape may appear as simply the depiction of observed nature, this installation alludes to the way in which representation can be a carrier of content, acting as the perfect mask for its subject. Landscape is an ideal foil to make that which is constructed appear natural.