Exhibition Review: Anastasia Samoylova’s Landscape Sublime Alters Our Visual Perspectives
Landscape Sublime: Forests, 2014, © Anastasia Samoylova, Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery
By Ana Osorno
Images often have a way of coming to life, but immersing ourselves in a 3D stream of consciousness is a unique take on modern-day photography and the power of space. In her new show “Landscape Sublime,” Anastasia Samoylova does just that. Her show, which is currently at the Laurence Miller Gallery, creates a world of one-dimensional views of her three-dimensional works that bring new perspectives to classic images.
Landscape Sublime: Rainy Window Views, 2013 © Anastasia Samoylova, Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery
In her work, Samoylova has captured the idea of consumerism culture in our society and our human experience of becoming viewers who flee from reality to the magical world of the internet. Here, we have the freedom to search images of escapism, such as beaches, oceans, forests, rainbows, and mountains, and to transport ourselves there. Some of the most beautiful places on earth become locations that exist on our computer screens and are often shown through stock images and romanticized photos of said places. Some of us have seen such sites in real life, maybe even taken a picture on our phone ourselves, and many of us have seen those images online. So, what happens when those images become larger than life and exist in the space around us.
Landscape Sublime: Black and White Mountains © Anastasia Samoylova, Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery
Samoylova is exploring that question herself. Using online stock images, she has created thematic groups of photographs, reprinted them, and physically manipulated them to create a new perspective of real-life landscapes. Her images are then folded, cut, stacked, and rephotographed as documentation of its previous physical existence. These prints of the 3D images work as recreations of these infamous locations within the space of the four walls.
Landscape Sublime: Trees In Fog © Anastasia Samoylova, Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery
This take on manipulated imagery invites the viewer to participate in the discourse and the critique highlighted by Samoylova of the consumerism of images in our everyday culture. Furthermore, the work allows us to understand how commercial images are often unreal and exaggerated versions of the truth and are meant to catch the eye in the same way that “an infinite hall of mirrors” would.
Not only is Samoylova’s work a critique of unreal stock images and consumerism culture, but it also expands upon the idea of this unrealistic perspective by creating her works through the combination of a collection of five to ten stock images of the same place and recreating them.
Landscape Sublime: Six Real Matterhorns, 2019 © Anastasia Samoylova, Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery
An image in the series that immediately stood out to me was the piece titled Six Real Matterhorns. In this piece, Samoylova has repeated her manipulation process and created an alternate reality where six identical infamous mountains float around each other. Each image, slightly different from the next, captures the same mountain, but through Samoylova’s creation, each individual image is different, and each mountain exists in her altered space. This reflects the reality of the hundreds of thousands of almost identical photos you can find in an instant with a quick search on Google. However, while they are all images of the same subjects, each image exists individually on the internet. Similarly, each representation of the mountain in her work Six Real Matterhorns exists in the piece she created.
Landscape Sublime has managed to connect a physical space to an online idea and critique and invites the viewer to participate in the created world. You can see this show now through December 31st, 2020, at the Laurence Miller Gallery.
