Darren Almond fan club

Darren Almond surprises me because he is at one moment so tied to aesthetics and then making a conceptual structure in the next piece. I think he makes a good move to separate these two aims.

I’m very drawn to his work in landscapes. Looking for a horizon line, where there seems to be none. The water blends into the sky, the grass is never ending. Landscapes are often determined by the above and below, but his seem to have no end, no point to grasp onto, a simple view without a summit. Yet they invite you to keep looking..

I have always loved Kant’s work on the Beautiful and Sublime, and his discussion of landscapes seems to apply here. In his argument, the logical sublime is evoked by the immeasurable and colossal – the infinitie – which shows itself in Almond’s work. The immensity of a mountain or vastness of the sky. In this we see our own mortality and insignificance.

The dynamic sublime corresponds with the superior forces of nature. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, oceans, things that cannot be contained. The power of nature is apparent here, we see both awe and fear. Kant describes a ‘negative lust’ in which attraction and repulsion blend into one grey and androgynous experience.

Perhaps this dynamic sublime is more apparent in other artists works in the galleries that are not dealing with landscape directy – for example Svenja Deininger’s works have a horizon that appears more powerful, weighty, ominous..

There is a great show on landscape imagery up at art on air  – I am excited to see, it’s up now until April 1^st

http://artonair.org/exhibition/dark-paradise