JEANETTE LAND SCHOU – OFF ROAD/VILDVEJE
September 2nd – October 1st 2022
Birthe Laursen Art Agency Gilleleje, St. Strandstræde 1, 3250 Gilleleje
Human interactions with wild, primordial nature have become so rare, that any such encounter now seems estranged and abject. Our understanding of nature in the global North has turned into bizarre conventions, now ingrained in the cultural reproduction of national history. Our dominant understanding of nature has been established and cultivated by man and is strongly influenced by our geographical context. The great Danish beech forests, serving as an emblem of Danish nature, is a deep-seated illusion.
With the exhibition Off Road/Vildveje Jeanette Land Schou offers us insight into the vegetation that inhabits Amager Fælled. The area is not categorized as wild nature, and yet the nature here exists without any particular intention in the fringe areas between the city and the countryside. The inquiring premise of the photographs demonstrate a harmony of composition in the untamed flora. Amidst entangled leaves and crooked trunks chaos reigns in a nonhierarchical system of profound balance. The images gently frame the nature as a living system with its own terms and inform us of a biodiversity and nature almost free from human interests.
The exhibition attributes value to all entities and systems by decomposing conventional ideas about significance and beauty. The works become an invitation to let the gaze wander in pursuit of the mediating perspective of the photographs. Jeanette Land Schou’s focus on that which is rarely assigned significance, generates a democratization of the photographic motif – in this case the purposeless wild nature.
Jeanette Land Schou (b. 1958) studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Her practice is founded in photography. She investigates the landscape as motif and also creates minimalistic photographic tableaux. The human touch is both present and not present in her work, accumulating an acute awareness of the culturally created as well as the human imprint on the world.
The exhibition Off Road/Vildveje can be seen from September 2nd – October 1st 2022 at Birthe Laursen Art Agency, St. Strandstræde 1, 3250 Gilleleje. Opening hours: Friday 2 – 6 pm, Saturday 12 – 4 pm, or by appointment.