.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Spanning over two metres across, Marshgate Snare (2022) is a quintessential example of Emma Webster’s ambivalent landscapes, which are assembled through a hybrid sketching-sculpting process with the aid of digital dioramas. It was featured at Webster’s Asia debut Illuminarium in Seoul the year it was made. At once fantastical and relatable, estranged yet familiar, this turbulent horizontal vista rendered in variegated greens and umbers exemplifies Webster’s painterly virtuosity, one reminiscent of Romantic landscape painting. At the centre of this unpopulated land, a mysterious light source emerges around which entities inflate, distort or recede. Sky-high trees undulate and twist; branches and biomorphic substances levitate and overstretch as if gravitated by an invisible force. An enigmatic scene that evokes curiosity and confusion, Marshgate Snare is one of the ‘places that are not places’ Webster has forged in the realm of virtual reality to question the nature of truth and perception in the contemporary world.
Currently based in Los Angeles, Webster was born in Encinitas, California in 1989 and studied art practice at Stanford University before earning her MFA in Painting from Yale. Formally trained as a painter and with experience in theatre set design, Webster initially developed her compositions in a range of analogue methods—sketching, sculpting, and building physical maquettes—until she was introduced to the virtual reality program Blender during the lockdown. Perfecting her skill in digital modelling at a time when social systems tumbled, Webster began to render her sketches and figurines in the screen space where the impossible becomes possible. Elements and forms drawn from various sources are conflated and altered to formulate her landscapes; theatrical lighting is integrated to explore the dimension between spaces. Carving out a scene from within before laying it down through a process of mark-making, Webster subverts the foundations of landscape painting as a mirror onto nature. As Emily McDermott observes, the artist ‘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, 2 September 2022).
Webster’s uncanny and meticulous compositions often invite the viewer to look inward towards an illuminated centre. Is the bright hollow in Marshgate Snare a refuge from the outside world, or, as the work’s title might imply, a trap? Her paintings, according to critic Johanna Fateman, are essentially ‘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, 27 September 2021). Webster’s bold and distinctly 21st-century landscape practice has earned her numerous solo exhibitions internationally. Her work is held in prestigious public collections around the globe, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Columbus Museum of Art, and Yuz Museum, Shanghai.
Currently based in Los Angeles, Webster was born in Encinitas, California in 1989 and studied art practice at Stanford University before earning her MFA in Painting from Yale. Formally trained as a painter and with experience in theatre set design, Webster initially developed her compositions in a range of analogue methods—sketching, sculpting, and building physical maquettes—until she was introduced to the virtual reality program Blender during the lockdown. Perfecting her skill in digital modelling at a time when social systems tumbled, Webster began to render her sketches and figurines in the screen space where the impossible becomes possible. Elements and forms drawn from various sources are conflated and altered to formulate her landscapes; theatrical lighting is integrated to explore the dimension between spaces. Carving out a scene from within before laying it down through a process of mark-making, Webster subverts the foundations of landscape painting as a mirror onto nature. As Emily McDermott observes, the artist ‘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, 2 September 2022).
Webster’s uncanny and meticulous compositions often invite the viewer to look inward towards an illuminated centre. Is the bright hollow in Marshgate Snare a refuge from the outside world, or, as the work’s title might imply, a trap? Her paintings, according to critic Johanna Fateman, are essentially ‘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, 27 September 2021). Webster’s bold and distinctly 21st-century landscape practice has earned her numerous solo exhibitions internationally. Her work is held in prestigious public collections around the globe, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Columbus Museum of Art, and Yuz Museum, Shanghai.