Artipedia - Arts News

DCKT Contemporary is pleased to announce an
exhibition by the collaborative artists castaneda/reiman. Their
latest body of work focuses on the natural scenic environments
existing on the fringes of the urban landscape, their various
interpretations and how these areas are reflected within domestic
spaces.

Several large wall pieces loosely depict
postcard versions of coastal California. At first glance, these
appear to be large multilayered canvas paintings of beautiful scenes
rich with glazes and grounded in painting tradition. In fact, they
are standard 4×8 foot plywood and sheetrock layered in drywall mud.
This mud is pigmented with commercial tints and applied with a
trowel more in the tradition of house building than conventional
landscape painting.

Dozens of carefully cast, concrete replicas
of river rock and quarry stones ranging in scale from overlooked
pebbles to average landscaping rock are carefully placed in piles
around the gallery. Some rocks blend with the architecture of the
space while others supply substructure for the weighty landscape
pieces. It soon becomes clear that there is a uniformity of color
and a repeat of the forms not present in nature, an evident
indication that they are not rocks but replicas. Their function is
multi-faceted: they represent the geological foundation of an
exterior landscape, their concrete material represents the
foundation of a house, while at the same time they are hand-crafted
art objects.

A palette, built at 80% actual size in solid
walnut, goes from a functional to a contradictory object. This
normally overlooked construction is now elevated as it becomes an
absurd stage for more hand-cast rocks. The same absurdity that
exists in the palette and rocks is seen in a hand-painted watercolor
replica of a commercial wallpaper border. This manufactured,
idyllic, natural landscape horizon repeats itself for 15 yards,
existing in its standard commercial form just as the drywall sheets
do.

castaneda/reiman are recipients of a 2004
Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship. Their work is included in
the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.