© 2022

Landscape painting Mexico (Desert/ Jungle), 2015, Russia (Forest), 2016, Kenia (Kibera), 2019 


https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_JvB_Landscape Painting_Wüste_3erflach_8bit_2015.jpg

Landscape Painting (Desert), 2015 (video still)



Landscape Painting is a photographic and filmic series documenting Julius von Bismarck’s painterly interventions in various natural environments. With each action, von Bismarck engages the tradition of landscape painting by literally covering it in paint. He physically confronts nature's monumental dimensions to finally simplify the landscape's complexity through drastic (colour) reduction. His interventions took place in a Mexican desert and jungle (2015), a Russian forest (2016), a slum in Kibera, Nairobi (2019) and more recently in a quarry in Lanzarote, Spain (2021).



Landscape Painting (Mexico) (2015) shows painted segments of land in two different locations: a cacti- covered rockscape in the Mexican desert, and a jungle scene in Chiapas. Both interventions are documented with a thirty-minute video respectively. In each location, von Bismarck set up a team of locals, who helped him to cover the selected parcel in white acrylic and subsequently overpaint it in colours true to the landscape’s original shades – as a faithful recollection of how they remembered their land. In the jungle, local farmers painted various green tones onto the firstly in-white-covered environment, leaf by leaf, as recalled by memory. Similarly, in the desert, local agricultural workers repainted the rocky landscape, resulting in an accurate representation of the scenery’s original state. 





The Landscape Painting photographs are composed of multiple detail views, resulting in extremely high- resolution images. Upon closer examination, one can find the layer of acrylic paint that covers leaves, thorns, sand, and other aspects of the landscape.





Departing from the recurrent question throughout his work – “To what extent is human’s perspective of nature determined by how art presents it to us?” – von Bismarck’s Landscape Paintings challenge contemporary image production by conceptually exposing contradictions in human's perception of nature, but also our depiction of it, namely by deconstructing art historical themes and aesthetics through references to imitation, falsification and idealisation. Applying paint to landscapes is generally perceived as an attack on nature, yet with his actions von Bismarck invites reflection on a western view of human’s place in nature as well as on (post-) colonialism.

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_JvB_Landscape Painting_Wüste_Prod1_2015.jpg

Landscape Painting (Desert), 2015 (video still)

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_JvB_Landscape Painting_Wüste_Prod2_2015.jpg

Landscape Painting (Desert), 2015 (video still)

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_Screen Shot 2015-03-25 at 03_40_24 copy_v2.jpg

Landscape Painting (Jungle), 2015 (video still)

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_Screen Shot 2015-03-25 at 03_31_19 copy.jpg

Landscape Painting (Jungle), 2015 (video still)

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_Screen Shot 2015-03-25 at 03_39_01 copy.jpg

Landscape Painting (Jungle), 2015 (video still)

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_JvB_Landscape Painting_Jungle_70mm_2015.jpg

Landscape Painting (Jungle), 2015

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_JvB_Landscape Painting_Jungle_Weiss_2015_2.jpg

Landscape Painting (Jungle), 2015 (process photo)

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_JvB_Landscape Painting_Jungle_Detail3_2015.jpg

Landscape Painting (Jungle), film still, 2015

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_JvB_Landscape Painting_Jungle_Detail2_2015.jpg

Landscape Painting (Jungle), 2015 (process photo)

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44__DSC3656.jpg

Landscape Painting (Jungle), 2015 (process photo)

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_JvB_Landscape Painting_Jungle_Detail6_2015.jpg

Landscape Painting (Jungle), 2015 (process photo)

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_JvB_Landscape Painting_Jungle_Detail4_2015.jpg

Landscape Painting (Jungle), 2015 (process photo)

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44_JvB_Landscape Painting_Jungle_Detail5_2015.jpg

Landscape Painting (Jungle), 2015 (process photo)

https://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/files/gimgs/th-44__DSC9175.jpg

Landscape Painting (Kibera), Nairobi, Kenya, 2019 (process photo) | in collaboration with One Fine Day