Comer Collection - Composed Perception: Landscape as Aesthetic Process

Composed Perception: Landscape as Aesthetic Process – Selections from the Comer Collection

Curator:  Amanda Dunbar, PhD graduate student

Reception: Friday, April 1, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. at the SP/N Gallery

This exhibit of contemporary landscape photography derived from the Comer Collection aims to explore the relationship of the human being to the earth, while also examining how the landscapes inhabited are socially, culturally and aesthetically composed.

At the very heart of the concept of “landscape” lies a duality: it describes both a vehicle for visual expression, and ostensibly, a natural entity, though one that carefully mediated by the human being. In cultivating any especially “aesthetic view”, a landscape describes an environment that has been aesthetically processed. The artist (and subsequently the beholder) takes part in shaping and interpreting; the habit or impulse for representing a particular area of a natural environment as “landscape”—or constructing it mentally when we are presented with a particularity arresting set of natural phenomenon—speaks to a specific visual tradition within the Western artistic canon, and a particular relationship with our physical environment. Indeed, “landscape” asks the viewer to consider where or if they belong, and as such, raises issues of identity and orientation that become in-separable from the reading of—and pleasure from—images of environment.

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Gallery hours:
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays: 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Thursdays and Fridays: 1 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Closed Sundays and Mondays
Persons with disabilities may submit a request for accommodations to participate in this event at UT Dallas’ ADA website. You may also call (972) 883-5331 for assistance or send an email to ADACoordinator@utdallas.edu. All requests should be received no later than 2 business days prior to the event.