Continuing through February 29, 2020
Whitney Bedford's exhibition "Reflections on the Anthropocene" consists of a series of new paintings entitled "Veduta." In each work, Bedford appropriates and reinterprets landscapes by artists such as Caspar David Friedrich, John Constable and John Singer Sargent, presenting them as backgrounds, seen through a window or interior space. Bedford plays with foreground background relationships in these works— an empty stage or room often separates the distant landscape from monochromatic and close-up depictions of plant-life, which are rendered in a more illustrative style.
In "Veduta, (Friedrich/ White Rainbow)" Bedford begins with Caspar David Friedrich’s “Landscape with Rainbow” (c. 1810), retaining the integrity of his green and yellow hues and sweeping white rainbow that arcs across the composition. She interrupts the expansive view by placing a neon yellow-green cactus-like plant in the foreground, at the edge of a turquoise platform. The yellow lines of this architectural enclosure bisect the sweep of the rainbow, calling attention to the relationship between past and present as well as the natural and man-made landscape. In this and other works Bedford reflects upon the shifting interpretations of the sublime as well as issues of climate change. These amalgamations of myriad styles and genres of landscape painting are by turns imaginative, playful and intellectual.
