M - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

Patrick Huse
Bølgende landskap, watercolor and pencil, 27.6 x 39.4 in. / 70 x 100 cm. 1992 � Patrick Huse
The artist of our times is very conscious of the
way his or her art is displayed.
In a world where so many things are communicated
upon us, this is not so unnatural in the sense that if you
say you want to communicate something very specific it
is important that you clearly decide what you show and
how to show it. There should be no contradictions
between what you are communicating and how you
display it. In this sense display is important.
Would you consider video an artefact of our
civilization? Is it an artefact or a medium or
both?
I see everything as a medium, a vehicle, a possible way of
communicating something and everything is connected.
The way I work myself is that I collect all kinds of
information on issues I rework and I communicate
through photography, writing, painting, drawing and
video. Some content is best communicated through
photography, other times through video, or painting. And
if I cannot communicate my ideas through these
mediums, I write it.
A lot of your work has dealt with the landscape,
but is it a social landscape, a place that includes
people within it or a barren landscape?
53
I am interested in the uncultivated landscape because
that brings me closer to nature. By reworking this
material into art you discover that any landscape or land
area has a social meaning or significance. Working in the
Arctic it is very difficult not being socially or
environmentally involved because everything is so open.
We must also remember that these areas have been
sustainable for several thousand years before white
people made their entrance, so they contain specialized
knowledge inherited during hundreds of years.
Would you consider J.M.W. Turner a cultivated
landscape painter, or an uncultivated landscape
painter...
At the moment you paint a landscape you cultivate it.
Nature is a world unto itself and impossible to recreate.
Turner is representing an early European academic
landscape painting, which is to a high degree cultivated.
This is because he was a very strong proponent of
European Romanticism, which is one way of approaching
nature or seeing/experiencing the landscape.
Yes, it is very much about progress in the 19 th
century and how it altered a view of nature. You
have said: "When art stops becoming social
criticism it becomes mere entertainment."