Landscape #4
Evan Mast
September 10 - November 18, 2023Brackett Creek Exhibitions, DUMBO, New York
Press Release
Brackett Creek is pleased to present a new video installation by Evan Mast. Landscape #4 is a 16-minute, 30-second video that begins on a roadside, lush with vegetation, and moves through urban landscape—arrangements of stacked furnishings, urban detritus, opulent karaoke bars, and motorized traffic undulating in reflective surfaces, and ends back on a lush roadside vista.
Mast states of Landscape #4: “This one started with a total of 2 months on foot... slowly getting familiar with the particularities of the area—the materials, textures, colors, and specific fixtures that reoccur and form common threads. I think perhaps the most important part of the process happens then... letting a value system emerge as you walk through a place. Then as you begin to focus in on the various aspects, it guides the way you walk.”
Using thousands of static videos, Mast edits the footage into a singular, panning landscape, akin to the unfurling of a 12th-Century Chinese handscroll or visiting an 19th-Century “panorama painting” (the precursor to the Moving Picture). In each of Mast’s videos, the viewer moves through the landscape horizontally, with the illusion of continuous space.
The aural landscape is also composed as seamless fiction, collaged from field recordings, foley sounds, and sound effects recorded in Mast’s studio. In addition to the soundtrack, Mast has installed sculptural elements onto which additional still videos are projected.
Landscape #4 was shot in Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand in 2022. Mast’s Landscape series have previously been filmed in China, Taiwan, and Pakistan. Evan Mast lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Mast produces music under his stage name E.VAX and was one half of the electronic band Ratatat. His latest album was released in 2021.
PDF Version
Brackett Creek is pleased to present a new video installation by Evan Mast. Landscape #4 is a 16-minute, 30-second video that begins on a roadside, lush with vegetation, and moves through urban landscape—arrangements of stacked furnishings, urban detritus, opulent karaoke bars, and motorized traffic undulating in reflective surfaces, and ends back on a lush roadside vista.
Mast states of Landscape #4: “This one started with a total of 2 months on foot... slowly getting familiar with the particularities of the area—the materials, textures, colors, and specific fixtures that reoccur and form common threads. I think perhaps the most important part of the process happens then... letting a value system emerge as you walk through a place. Then as you begin to focus in on the various aspects, it guides the way you walk.”
Using thousands of static videos, Mast edits the footage into a singular, panning landscape, akin to the unfurling of a 12th-Century Chinese handscroll or visiting an 19th-Century “panorama painting” (the precursor to the Moving Picture). In each of Mast’s videos, the viewer moves through the landscape horizontally, with the illusion of continuous space.
The aural landscape is also composed as seamless fiction, collaged from field recordings, foley sounds, and sound effects recorded in Mast’s studio. In addition to the soundtrack, Mast has installed sculptural elements onto which additional still videos are projected.
Landscape #4 was shot in Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand in 2022. Mast’s Landscape series have previously been filmed in China, Taiwan, and Pakistan. Evan Mast lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Mast produces music under his stage name E.VAX and was one half of the electronic band Ratatat. His latest album was released in 2021.
PDF Version
