Virtual landscapes

The landscape subject allows me to evoke feelings and moods in the viewer so he enters the image spontaneous and emotionally.

On the first glance the computer simulations look like photographs taken from reality. Looking closer you read from the details: I am in a strange, a virtual world. The degree of realism is minimized, leaving just enough to seduce the viewer. My starting point is never a landscape I have seen in reality, but a calculated construction of an archetypal space situation. I disguise this construction with ridges, water, clouds, haze and sunlight. Coming from the abstract side, I approach step by step the mood of the archetypal situation, adding details and naturalism, searching for reflections of ancient memories.

The Archetypes

The End of the World

is the inherent picture of the idea of finiteness. The imagination of a place, where the space ends and the time stands still.

On every island there is a stretch of coast, where the see looks like there is no land beyond. The sun does not warm and the earth is unfertile. looking in this direction all paradise, all happiness lies behind your back. There is suction in this inhospitableness a vertex of looking down from a tower or a cliff.

The Last Part of the Trail

An obstacle blocks the view, but here is the trail towards the pass. A promising gloom - it is not far anymore, a last turn. Just run, faster, and out of breath!

The Cave

A space like a gullet - narrowing and widening - a prenatal trauma?

The Drowning

The wave approaches the swimmer. His last glance at the beauty of the light, how clear is the water, how powerful its freezing grasp.

The Paradise

is the metaphor for the highest and last goal. The goal we account to ourselves for at the end of our life, the goal that leads us and directs our decisions. The idea of the paradise gives the mood, the instinctive feeling for a direction. The idea of the Paradise is the longing to be one with the world.

Gerhard Mantz, Berlin 1998

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More images from this series can be found at www.gerhard-mantz.de

Copyright information

This is an archive of the Digital Art Museum for historical reference.
See dam.org for the current site.