Extended Studio: Jeff Carter
Scaffold/Landscape
Exhibition Dates: September 5 - October 18, 2003

Jeff Carter will be presenting the first in a new series of projects titled extended studio developed to encourage the working process of artists by providing time, space and flexibility within the gallery walls.

Vedanta Gallery is dedicated to promoting provocative models in which its artists can expand their individual dialogue. The extended studio will acknowledge the working process as an integral part in the formulation of ideas and will provide a public space for this development including the fundamental resources that do not usually exist in a gallery environment. Each artist will re-define the idea of an extended studio in his or her own terms. Some may choose to literally expose their working process while others may use the time provided to stage an ongoing performance or explore new media.

Carter's extended studio project Scaffold/Landscape continues his recent sculptural investigations of tourism, landscape and memory. He seeks to define landscape in fluid terms, as a shifting space that blurs the line between physically visiting a place and the memories that linger. Scaffold/Landscape is an attempt to reconnect to a place without being there, relying instead on spatial and kinetic memory to extend the conception of landscape.

Scaffold/Landscape is a reconstruction of the beautiful terraced rice fields in Indonesia, which are often associated with words like exotic, paradise or romance. The bamboo used to create the structure, both invites and denies these expectations, as it is a cheap and common construction material throughout Asia. Carpeting is used in a similarly ubiquitous way, referring to mundane occupational environments. Using these materials metaphorically, Carter transforms the rice fields into a constructed memory.

Jeff Carter
Landscape
Exhibition Dates: May 3 - June 15

A Vague Sensation of Paradise, 2001
wood, aluminum, stainless steel, nylon, motor
36" x 36" x 24"

We are pleased to announce Jeff Carter's second solo exhibition at Vedanta Gallery titled Landscape. Since 1995, Jeff Carter has spent a significant amount of time traveling in India, Sri Lanka, China, and Indonesia. Since then his work has been focused on examining his position within the context of tourism and the effects time and distance have on objects such as souvenirs, snapshots, and video footage. The resulting works question what differentiates visiting a place from living somewhere and how experience is mediated by memory.

Landscape is the latest body of work resulting from Carter's memory of extended trips to Java and Bali. Included are a series of kinetic sculptures titled A Vague Sensation of Paradise, consisting of large packing crates in which the lids are divided into moving segments that undulate in a wave pattern, creating the illusion of fluid. These objects refer not only to the act of physical movement, but also to the intangible and persistent residue of the traveling experience such as nostalgia or the longing to return. Another piece titled Earthquake, is a machine which holds a Bali guidebook that at certain intervals is shaken vigorously and in the project room a lone arrow glows pointing towards Mecca. Landscape is Carter's attempt to reconnect to these places without being there, relying instead on spatial and kinetic memory to extend the landscape beyond its representation.

Jeff Carter was born in 1967 and lives and works in Chicago. He has recently exhibited in Sculpture in Chicago Now Part II at Columbia College in Chicago, Detourism at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, Personal Light at the Kunsthaus Hamburg, Germany, a solo exhibition at Rare Gallery in NY and Organic/Mechanic at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI.