Jeff Carter
Landscape

May 3 - June 15

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.

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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.

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