RECONSTRUCTING LANDSCAPE | ZIFF HOUSE  
19.06.2004 | 05.09.2004

“Geology paid my way through university,” writes Ziff House in an artist’s statement. “Prospecting in the summer opened my eyes to the northern landscape (of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory); which I believe is unknown to many people.”

Influenced by these unique natural surroundings, and absorbing the artistic aspirations of his poet father and ceramicist mother, House developed his singular style of painting. Constructing his own theories and experimentations based on the physicality of Cubism and the flattened, coloured space of Pop Art, the artist bypassed the usual accepted cultural norm of established art training.

Using practical, convenient materials Ziff House began his production of the works in the exhibition by using a sandblast gun to spray pulped paper over flexible, mesh forms. Painted with gentle hues, these forms present distorted suggestions of lush forests, undulating mountains, and other iconic images from the Canadian landscape.

 Ziff House for all intents and purposes is a walking artist. Following in the footsteps of the British school, his work is derived from images that accrue during monumental treks over pristine landscape. His most recent walk was through the isolated Kalalau Valley on the island of Kauai where he searched for “the perfect moment” to store in his mind for future reference in the studio. He uses photography only as a reminder of a certain image of place while he develops three-dimensional landscapes which are as intricately constructed as the crystals of the minerals for which he used to search. His relatively isolated studio practice eschews the trappings of the art world much as American sculptor Lee Bontecou’s which saw a thirty-year period of intense and personal art production away from the eyes and opinions of the art cognoscenti.

House reinterprets perspective lines by introducing three-dimensionality, mass, and authentic shadows into a discipline that traditionally requires only an illusion of space. His perspective lines dare to move as they do in real space, shifting to different perspectives as the viewer changes position. Blurring the boundaries between pure abstraction and traditional, picturesque landscape painting, the artist challenges the idea of pictorial space, literally pushing his medium out of the two-dimensional rectangle. Despite their connection to the artists’ hand, and the mechanical process that he employs to create them, the works themselves seem to be crafted out of the natural elements they depict. Mimicking an overgrowth of fungus or a cluster of sea coral, the painted constructions give the impression they were plucked out of the wild, fully formed and waiting to be hung on the gallery wall. Undeniably organic in structure, they hint that House’s role as an art maker is more gardener than manufacturer.

House points out that art is everywhere, and “one has only to choose and mix” the examples they see. Perhaps this “choosing and mixing” of the materials in his environment is at the heart of his practice, and by working this way he encourages the necessary climate in which his art can flourish. In the words of painter Frank Stella, Ziff House accomplishes this task of “creating space…in which the subjects of paintings can live.”