Wood and linocut print on Japanese paper
Chelsea Mortenson’s work revolves
around the notion of landscape and the human manifestations inhabiting them:
there isn’t a place on Earth that hasn’t been visited and changed by human
presence, even in the wildest areas. “I want to underline the strangeness of
the way we apprehend the world. The mistake it is to think we can separate
human life from the other kinds of lives, and the sense of isolation coming
with this mentality. We inhabit the world as much as the world inhabits us. I
look at nature in all its diversity; its beauty, its eternity, its chaos,”
explains the artist. In Tempête dans les Landes I (matin) [Tempest in the
moors I (morning)], the diversity of the techniques used (wood and linocut)
highlights the contrast between the calm beauty of the landscape and the
deflagration of the tempest. It also creates a contemporary take on the sublime
where terror is triggered by human actions.
