Fields
2012–13Vast oil fields, stitched from satellite images, expose the hidden circuitry of America’s energy empire.
Fields (2012–13) is composed from hundreds of high-resolution satellite images of North American oil fields. Seen together, they resemble monumental canvases, echoing the abstract expressionist painters of the 1950s. The series suggests that the gestures of Pollock or Kline may have been less expressions of the unconscious than unconscious reflections of the industrial landscapes around them.
Various dimensions and materials, site specific installations.
“The 20th Century was fuelled by oil, an industry that shaped almost every aspect of modern life. With Earth-imaging satellites, it is now possible to see these extractive landscapes in detail unimaginable to earlier generations. In Fields, I stitched together hundreds of screenshots from satellite platforms to create large-scale prints of North American oil fields, revealing intricate networks of wells, pipelines, storage tanks, and roads.
From orbit, the land resembles a vast abstract composition, recalling the gestural dynamism of Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, and Franz Kline. At the same moment these painters were defining abstraction on canvas, oil production was carving its own abstractions into the American landscape. The parallels raise a provocative question: were the canvases of mid-century painters an unconscious reflection of these new terrains? And what future industrial landscapes might shape the art of the new millenium?
— Mishka Henner
From orbit, the land resembles a vast abstract composition, recalling the gestural dynamism of Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, and Franz Kline. At the same moment these painters were defining abstraction on canvas, oil production was carving its own abstractions into the American landscape. The parallels raise a provocative question: were the canvases of mid-century painters an unconscious reflection of these new terrains? And what future industrial landscapes might shape the art of the new millenium?
— Mishka Henner
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