Christian Eckart : White Noise

Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to announce White Noise, a solo exhibition of new work by Christian Eckart.

This new series explores climate change as both the subject and object of the pieces. Throughout Eckart’s career he has been interested in the articulation of a meta-sublime in the form of his painting/ sculpture hybrids. As he further developed this interconnection and new style of digital work for White Noise, native correlations began to unfold between climate issues and tropes of the romantic sublime in Western painting - e.g.; mountains, waterfalls, sunsets, etc.

For the works in this exhibition Eckart has digitally voided, with semi-transparent white, much of the beauty found in images very carefully sourced from the internet. The images depict subjects replete with their own iconological arc; originating in 18th and 19th century romantic enlightenment painting, later evolving into primary subject matter at the advent of photography, then to picture postcard fodder in the 20th century, thereafter exploited as backdrops and locations for print and television advertisements and finally as motifs of 21st century Instagram posts.

In White Noise, Eckart is re-presenting romantic sublime imagery for the purpose of reconsidering its primal power specifically in the context of the potential extinction of the human species as a result of climate change. Without humankind, who will be left to appreciate, collect, and share the Earth's ineffable beauty and awesome grandeur?

The exhibition title is an acknowledgement to the profound impact Don DeLillo's 1985 novel by the same name, and presenting similar undercurrents, had on the artist many years earlier.