LANDSCAPES OF A WORLD GONE WRONG
by Jill Fehrenbacher
Architectural conjecture, urban speculation, landscape futures… If any of these subjects intrigue you, you absolutely must check out the fabulous BLDGBLOG. My newest favorite blog is like the lovechild of conceptual art and paper architecture: filled with awesome explorations of landscape art, maps, and architectural philosophy.
One of the latest posts on BLDG that caught my attention is a discussion of Lori Nix’s Landscapes of a World-Gone-Wrong. The artist-photographer Lori Nix creates miniature landscapes “out of any material that will simulate a real landscape” and then photographs these sets, producing dark-humored visions of a world filled with disaster and apocalyptic decay. While her images resembles the work - or at least the working method - of Oliver Boberg and Thomas Demand, Nix’s work invokes a more readily apparent sense of humor, counteracting the potentially melodramatic “sky-is-falling” theme, and making it even more evocative.
I am sure you all will notice how much the top image (entitled “Flood”) resembles images of flooded New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I realize that this image might offend people, but please keep in mind that the artist created this image before the recent disasters in the gulf coast. It is not a matter of the artist reacting to the recent disasters, but instead of life imitating art. I am not sure whether the artist intends this - but I can’t help but read her work as a sardonic commentary on the contemporary state of our environment. Like an ironic early-warning system, the work seems to imply that if we continue down the path that we are on, we are all going to end up with ruined cities and two-headed dogs roaming our backyards.
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has a very model railroad aesthetic http://www.walthers.com/
interesting project of simulated urban decay with model railroads http://www.vestaldesign.com/projects/modelrr/