M - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

Patrick Huse
Landskap, watercolor and pencil, 27.6 x 39.4 in. / 70 x 100 cm., 1992 � Patrick Huse
emergence of landscape in art and culture as an indicator
of this distancing from the original all-encompassing life
on the land, where life was the landscape and vice versa,
and what we are missing is the awareness to the local
environment.
I have seen both extremes of this market thing. I
have seen artists involved in incredible production
just for the market. And others who do not even
consider it.
Today there is less to distinguish the art project from a
commercial project than ever before. Art in its nature
represents an individual language and could function as a
resistance towards standardization. This is always a
question of ethics. To do what the market demands is a
matter of choices and every choice always represents a
price you have to pay. These choices are personal, and
to a large degree depend on conditional demands. I try
to make the best possible conditions to communicate
the content in my work and from that choice I have to
work from a pedagogical point of view not considering
the market.
When you look at a landscape, a landscape is
calming.
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I believe the land or nature, if you want, is more
complicated than "calm" because it represent so much
information that has been delivered down through
history at the same time as it can give you a sense of
belonging. In the Western culture, from an urban point
of view, the landscape is something often visited on
Sundays for recreation. In one way this can seem
ridiculous but what it basically tells us is that humans
need a connection to nature. Maybe this is the calmness
you discuss.
When you look at a cityscape it is very
stimulating but there is no focus.
Fascination is always easy, and progress in urban culture
today is often connected to the spectacular, like a
happening with its highlights. You do not actually have to
distinguish much. You just attend to what is happening.
So your whole life becomes some sort of happening
created by others and the noise is so loud that you can't
hear your own heartbeat.
I think that the whole world is nature. Concrete,
asphalt, plastic, all materials are nature. In a
way, postmodern definitions of what nature is
and what art can be are rather artificial and
displaced, just as the culture is displaced from