Nostalgia & the Antiquated – The Landscape Series

In Nostalgia & the Antiquated – The Landscape Series, artist John T. Lange toys with romanticized memories that are fuzzy and vague. Through his deliberate use of materials and objects, he creates the setting for a narrative that he invites the viewer to help complete.

With Nostalgia & the Antiquated – The Landscape Series, I am sharing fragmented memories with the audience. I’ve created a scale model landscape scene that recalls aspects of my childhood. The use of aged family furniture and 8mm home movie film projectors, facilitate the notion of a time and place for the memories that I wish to evoke. The scale model hilltop toys with childhood memories of playing with train sets. The hillside that I have created, with its dramatic drops-offs, confounds these memories even more as it takes the physical form of scenery from where I currently reside in Los Angeles, CA near Griffith Park.

Two film projectors are used to create a single, diptych image directly onto the wall. The diptych image is projected onto the wall as a cast shadow. The two halves of the image are derived from the same source though the projected results on the wall are different. The imagery on the wall is blurry which effectively portrays the fuzzy nature of the memories themselves. A traditional film projection with an 8mm film roll would represent a recorded event, which would leave little room for interpretations. Since these memories are incomplete and obscured by time, objects such as the hillside are, created and placed outside of the film projector. In recreating my lost or fragmented anecdote in three-dimensional form, the narrative becomes entangled with current-day life experiences.

“Is this hillside a true representation of something from my past or is it the influence of my current surroundings and the influence of Hollywood?”

The table; with its flying geese, reveal the fleeting nature of the memories that seem to fly away with each passing season.

“I have always struggled to retain memories. Everyone has experienced this in our waking moments as we struggle to remember that dream we were enjoying just moments ago. For me, I find that this sensation happens throughout my days, nearly on a daily basis. I have to reread things over and over to hang on to the details. Is this a result of living in a world full of distractions or is this a sign of what the future holds for me? I watched my grandfather struggle with Alzheimer’s for the last few years. I watched him slowly forget who people were, where he was and even what year it was. In time, it seemed that he was reliving old memories or perhaps even living new experiences in a time framed by years that have since passed long ago. One comforting concept that helped me absorb these events was that, perhaps like the geese returning at the end of a season, maybe my memories will return to me in later years. Is it possible, that like in, Nostalgia & the Antiquated – The Landscape Series, I will have experiences that are fabricated from fragments of my memories?"

John T. Lange is a former member of Vox Populi Gallery who currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA as an artist & curator. He works in a variety of mediums in his studio while his exhibitions often take the form of multi-media installations. His work is engaging, with narratives and concepts that challenge the viewer to stop and think for a moment.

Nostalgia & the Antiquated – The Landscape Series (#3) was shown January 9, 2009 - March 1, 2009 at Vox Populi in Philadelphia, PA.