Eva Castringius “The Great Thirst - Palmdale”

Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Lands End / Artists

Eva Castringius, Germany: “The Great Thirst - Palmdale”, 103 x 180 cm, lambda colour print, 2003

The topic of Eva Castringius’ paintings and photographs is the multiply overdrawn appearance of the cultural landscape. “The Great Thirst”, a series of photographs, refers to the Los Angeles Aqueduct, built in 1907 to supply the immensely growing desert city with water. The mile-long tunnels and concrete channels taking the waters of the Owen River to the city slowly devastated the environment, leading to a desertification of the formerly fertile Owen Valley that still continues. The arrangements of artificial pine trees the artist placed in chosen settings can be seen as a melancholic comment.

Eva Castringius, Germany: “o.T.”, oil/acryl on nessel, 200x500cm, 2006

Castringius’ large format paintings, on the other hand, convey an impression of levitation, a floating in time and space. Explosions of colour, for-shortened depths, and architectural elements overlap and lead the viewer’s eyes to ever-changing directions. Castringius creates unreal, fictitious scenes that cannot be easily read but generously describe our concept of landscape: the broad horizon implies elements of street architecture and tube systems, light and weather phenomena, and overlapping horizons refer to how we experience the various aspects of mobility and pace in landscape.

It is no coincidence that her paintings, combining contours of inner and of outdoor spaces, refer to media imageries, to imaginations and projections that have found their narrative depictions in the vastness of the American landscape.