Landscape
(Maastricht / Mosae Forum 18)
In his animations Jacco Olivier (1972, the Netherlands) brings together painting and moving image. The artist makes partly use of traditional animation techniques. He paints an image with acrylic or oil paint and takes a photo. Next he paints over the image and takes another photo. This working method is being repeated until he has reached the final step in the making process. Oliver continuously changes the vantage point of the camera when taking the photos and uses computer software to add layers to the image. The viewer discovers very gradually the movement and depth the artist has added.
What the video work Landscape has in common with traditional (wide) landscape painters that paint is its basic material. Olivier, unlike the traditional painter, brings the artwork in motion, makes it abstract and does away with the horizon as principal motif. Landscape looks like a landscape seen from a bird’s eye view, a visualisation of the world that we have come to identify as a ‘landscape’. There are moments in which the ‘camera’ entirely focuses on details and the image is being defined by abstract blots and lines. When zooming out, a more recognisable image unfolds. The colours correspond with landscape elements; green for plants and trees, blue for water, gray for mountains. Or are we in fact seeing different things altogether? Are our associative powers getting the better of us? Are we being mislead by the work’s title?