Landscape Linoleum

I imagine the round earth, dark brown dirt and solid through. I am walking on the surface, the skin, shown to me.

This little patch, the park/garden in Middelheim has been resurfaced for generations. Each leaving their mark, their drawing; shaping the ground we walk/work on.

This canvas is not white.

I am walking over and in a fantasy garden — carefully mapped, orchestrated holding, framing, some nature. Full of life. Over this map I plan a few marks to converse.

We make our world. Each one of us too. A privilege for a moment to have such a large canvas. Marks so… to speak to.
Close scrutiny.

Under the magnifying glass.

Drawn in the sand. Drawing attention. Small details. Grass like paint, a surface, skin, place of illusion. The park contains, gives rise to illusion, or story telling, bracketing experience. Calm, tranquil, controlled nature.
More than a skin it seems a drawing. Like the children’s story Harold and the Purple Crayon. Where Harold draws the world around him as he wishes it to be.

This work draws/carves into the work of the park, expands the dialogue or the story. It uses the “real” material of the grass, trees, earth, “sculpture,” to support a further flight of fantasy/fancy.

Flying down the horizon line arriving at a human spine. The two things being one, they conflate. Microscopic and universal. Near and far.

An ant wishing for an aerial view, slowly covering ground the human eye moves across like the wind.

The first moment a symphony orchestra begins to play, the violins tuning up, the sky full of stars opens up above.

A film cutting away from close intimate action to an aerial view of a plane flying.

Inserting ourselves in the landscape. An odd thing to do given that we are here a priori.

Points touching, lines drawn, outer and inner worlds, the earth covered, dark, stripped; pressed against the colors of the painting — plastered like a bandage.

Peeling apart revealing interdependence.

The horizon line, drawn, where the lawn meets the edge of the trees. There is a flattening.

The lawn picks itself up and roles backwards to the feet of the eyes. A gash opens below the trees, a green cloud hovering over solid rock.
From this cut in the fabric of the scene there could arise trombone music and violins. Bass too. Sound filling the air floats to match the structured thought hovering over the park making it what it is. Forming it — bracketing it — framing. Music calls attention to times passage. Structured thought hovers as if timeless though it too is in flux. Ideas in the head forming reality do not include flux as part of the foreground.

Jessica Stockholder
1998