Another Green World

The exhibition Another Green World intends to draw parallels between the genre of landscape and the current preoccupation with "green" in popular culture. While the romanticism of 19th century landscape tradition linked the sublimity of nature with the existence of God, it also lent inspiration for westward expansion and the underlying impulse of "man’s" dominion over nature. This mixture of the profound with the pragmatic speaks to a fundamental contradiction in society’s relationship to nature, as the unchecked use of natural resources clashes with the idyllic image of nature as a world "set apart" and untouched by daily life. The commercial appropriation of green imagery is the most recent manifestation of this contradiction, as "greenwashing" facilitates the smoothing over of a conflict that most likely originates in the landscape tradition itself, where the goal of depicting the sublime beauty of the land was at times directly connected to its ultimate exploitation and control.