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拍品专文
Combining contemporary climate concerns with the majestic scale of nineteenth century landscape painting, Emma Webster’s Glen invites us to contemplate the power of painting, which has sought for centuries to distill and capture the beauty of nature. In order to do so, Webster uses historical references, even as she creates an entirely unique way forward for the medium. Writer Johanna Fateman has called Webster’s oeuvre “an imaginative approach to the centuries-old genre of landscape” (J. Fateman, “Emma Webster,” New Yorker, September 27, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/emma-webster). Sometimes regarded as a contemporary Vincent van Gogh or Thomas Cole, Webster works diligently to amplify the emotional, universal characteristics of painting.
Glen is an otherworldly scene, filled with secrets like a painting by the Post-Impressionist Henri Rousseau. Despite an air of mystery, it also invites us to explore its fecundity. The painting’s careful composition draws our eyes inward, toward the composition’s swirling center comprised of greens and blues. With Webster as our guide, we are “being dropped at dusk into a strange hollow, with trees twisting all around, bodies, streaks of color contouring muscles you had not suspected,” (C. Rurik, Emma Webster: Green Iscariot, New York, 2021, p. 5). The viewer is given options: do they stop at the landscape’s edge, or do they proceed to explore further. Glen exhibits all the detail and skill of a nineteenth century landscape painting, while bringing the genre into the present.
“Webster offers “windows onto a high-key, ultra-verdant world—sublime, supernatural realm that combines the thaumaturgic light of the Hudson River School with the watchful marshes and sinuous undergrowth in Disney’s ‘Maleficent’.” - Johanna Fateman
There is also something mythical about Glen that makes us wonder, is this a real place, or an imaginary one? Often using VR and digital methods to create her tableaux, Webster questions the nature of truth and perception. In so doing, she constructs a painting that is beyond reality. Returning to Fateman, Webster offers “windows onto a high-key, ultra-verdant world—sublime, supernatural realm that combines the thaumaturgic light of the Hudson River School with the watchful marshes and sinuous undergrowth in Disney’s ‘Maleficent’” (J. Fateman, “Emma Webster,” New Yorker, September 27, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/emma-webster). Glen is a fantasy, but not an escapist one. Rather, it becomes an extension of the life we know and an invitation to look more deeply at the beauty of our everyday lives.
A highly perceptive artist, Webster trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, Stanford University, and Yale University. Her work was immediately recognized for its boldness, earning her solo exhibitions internationally and inclusion in numerous celebrated group shows. Her work is represented in prestigious public collections around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai. In 2022, Perrotin gallery mounted a solo show of the artist’s work to inaugurate its newest gallery location in Seoul, and earlier this year held her first exhibition in Japan at Perrotin Tokyo.
Glen is, above all, about symbiosis in a world that might feel disconnected and overwhelming. As critic Emily McDermott notes of Webster, “Through her practice, she redefines painting as something that forges new relationships between artist and artwork, between artwork and viewer, between humans and their (un)natural surroundings” (E. McDermott, “Emma Webster is Reinventing Landscape Painting Using VR Technology,” ARTnews, September 2, 2022, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/emma-webster-perrotin-landscape-painting-1234638040). The modern world has always required space for introspection, and Glen conjures that space, somewhere between the world we inhabit, and the world as it could be.
Glen is an otherworldly scene, filled with secrets like a painting by the Post-Impressionist Henri Rousseau. Despite an air of mystery, it also invites us to explore its fecundity. The painting’s careful composition draws our eyes inward, toward the composition’s swirling center comprised of greens and blues. With Webster as our guide, we are “being dropped at dusk into a strange hollow, with trees twisting all around, bodies, streaks of color contouring muscles you had not suspected,” (C. Rurik, Emma Webster: Green Iscariot, New York, 2021, p. 5). The viewer is given options: do they stop at the landscape’s edge, or do they proceed to explore further. Glen exhibits all the detail and skill of a nineteenth century landscape painting, while bringing the genre into the present.
“Webster offers “windows onto a high-key, ultra-verdant world—sublime, supernatural realm that combines the thaumaturgic light of the Hudson River School with the watchful marshes and sinuous undergrowth in Disney’s ‘Maleficent’.” - Johanna Fateman
There is also something mythical about Glen that makes us wonder, is this a real place, or an imaginary one? Often using VR and digital methods to create her tableaux, Webster questions the nature of truth and perception. In so doing, she constructs a painting that is beyond reality. Returning to Fateman, Webster offers “windows onto a high-key, ultra-verdant world—sublime, supernatural realm that combines the thaumaturgic light of the Hudson River School with the watchful marshes and sinuous undergrowth in Disney’s ‘Maleficent’” (J. Fateman, “Emma Webster,” New Yorker, September 27, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/emma-webster). Glen is a fantasy, but not an escapist one. Rather, it becomes an extension of the life we know and an invitation to look more deeply at the beauty of our everyday lives.
A highly perceptive artist, Webster trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, Stanford University, and Yale University. Her work was immediately recognized for its boldness, earning her solo exhibitions internationally and inclusion in numerous celebrated group shows. Her work is represented in prestigious public collections around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai. In 2022, Perrotin gallery mounted a solo show of the artist’s work to inaugurate its newest gallery location in Seoul, and earlier this year held her first exhibition in Japan at Perrotin Tokyo.
Glen is, above all, about symbiosis in a world that might feel disconnected and overwhelming. As critic Emily McDermott notes of Webster, “Through her practice, she redefines painting as something that forges new relationships between artist and artwork, between artwork and viewer, between humans and their (un)natural surroundings” (E. McDermott, “Emma Webster is Reinventing Landscape Painting Using VR Technology,” ARTnews, September 2, 2022, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/emma-webster-perrotin-landscape-painting-1234638040). The modern world has always required space for introspection, and Glen conjures that space, somewhere between the world we inhabit, and the world as it could be.