ULRIKE LUDWIG | Landscapes

Opening: Friday, 5 February 2010, 7 p.m.

Exhibition: 6 - 27 February 2010

Loris Gallery has the pleasure of presenting Landscapes, the second solo exhibition by Ulrike Ludwig. With her images of vast agrarian land, Ulrike Ludwig shows the typology of a contemporary landscape, in which monoculture is the predominant image of our environment. Photographed between 2003 and 2009, these landscapes subtly reveal the economic constraints that lead to intensified use and development of agrarian land and hence to both ecological and agricultural monotony. Ulrike Ludwig’s images of endless humdrum fields reflects a develoment that is taking place simultaneously around the globe. 

Ulrike Ludwig’s landscapes are anonymous and vague. They lie somewhere between towns and cities – the images disclose as much – along main roads, at waterways along the large arteries that link the cities or trading centres. Ludwig underlines this impression with cartographic-like drawings that mark these links, roads and electricity routes but, in fact, leave them strangely indeterminate. The fields themselves are not pencil drawn but simply left as empty spaces. 

Although vague in terms of where, we are clearly dealing with the making of landscape spaces here. Ulrike Ludwig presents her typology of an agrarian landscape as a culturally and socially dependent space. 

Apart from drawings, the different levels of meaning in the photographs are emphasized by various media quotations. The issue here is optimizing tractor rides with GPS field navigation or the increased cultivation of so-called energy plants. 

Contrary to the American landscape photography of the 1970s or Heinrich Riebesehl’s agricultural landscapes, Ulrike Ludwig photographs in colour. Although the landscape perspectives are similarly sober and detached, the observer does not remain unaffected. One reason is colour, indicating the broad variety of soils, while vastness and the horizon emerge as the common thread throughout the series.